


you and i, we're an overnight sensation

by televangelists (overnights)



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Bartender AU, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Porn with Feelings, background cam/corona, you can fit so much emotional repression in this baby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:27:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28486836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/overnights/pseuds/televangelists
Summary: “You’re the new bartender?” Ianthe asks, glancing at Gideon with something resembling distaste. “Come back at tomorrow at four pm. Harry’s going to show you the ropes.”“Don’t call me that,” Harrow says automatically. Then, as the rest of Ianthe’s sentence sinks in: “Wait, I’m what?”“You’re training her,” Ianthe says. She’s smiling pleasantly, but Harrow catches the demonic flash of schadenfreude behind it. “Try not to kill each other, will you?”[In which Harrowhark Nonagesimus makes an enemy of her new coworker, celebrates her birthday properly for the first time, and slowly figures out what she wants.]
Relationships: Camilla Hect/Coronabeth Tridentarius, Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 24
Kudos: 167





	you and i, we're an overnight sensation

**Author's Note:**

> [alternate title: Harrow Nonagesimus Can't Deal With Feelings  
> alternate title 2: Hey Look, It's Another Very Long Oneshot That No One Asked For]
> 
> starting 2021 off right with gideon and harrow! the title is from a party song (the walk of shame) by all time low. here's a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/79E2M0BVGXvLvWsc8ni5nS?si=0wl2YU3ySqK6jwXLPV_oSQ)

If Harrowhawk Nonagesimus knows anything about life, she knows that only three things are certain: death, taxes, and her hatred for Gideon Nav.

Harrow has only known the girl for about five minutes, and she already despises her with a passionate hatred usually reserved for epic poetry and public displays of affection.

“Hey,” Gideon says, flashing Harrow what she probably thinks is a winning smile. Harrow is not won over in the slightest. “So, about that job opening?” 

Harrow frowns at her, gives her the best death glare possible under the circumstances considering that she’s supposed to be on customer service mode. “The Locked Tomb is highly selective when it comes to hiring. Do you have any prior experience with bartending?” 

“Yeah, I was a bartender in college,” Gideon says, sliding a folder containing a single sheet of paper across the counter. Harrow slides it right back at her; it sticks slightly on the damp wood of the bar. “Come on, at least take my application.” 

“I told you,” Harrow says shortly. “We’re selective. And even if we weren’t, you definitely would _not_ be what we’re looking for.” Her eyes trail over Gideon, taking in the bright red hair, the awful aviator shades propped on top of her head, the ripped black jeans, the acid-washed shirt bearing the logo of Dominicus Rising. 

(Harrow actually really likes that band, so seeing their merchandise on this oaf’s body is a slap in the face.)

Gideon braces a hand against the countertop, and Harrow absently notices how large it is. “Hey,” Gideon says. “I don’t know what your problem with me is, but I really need a job right now, so can you at least give my application to your manager or whatever?” Her eyes sweep over Harrow, and she smirks. “If you can even lift the folder, that is. Your arms are like spaghetti.” 

Harrow feels a hot flash of anger, along with a tiny bit of embarrassment that Gideon’s jibe isn’t totally wrong. Still, she isn’t going to admit to that. “Listen, asshole - ” 

“Oh, hey,” Camilla says, appearing over Harrow’s shoulder. “What’s going on here?” 

“This... _person_ ,” Harrow says, gesturing distastefully at Gideon. She’s being pretty generous with her definition of _person; red-haired gremlin_ is closer to the mark, in her opinion.“She showed up and she won’t go away.” 

Gideon snorts. “I would already be gone if you’d just _take my fucking application._ ” 

Camilla gives Gideon a once-over, her eyes catching briefly on Gideon’s biceps. Harrow wants to slam her head through a wall.

“You’re applying for that bartender position?” Camilla asks, and Gideon nods. “Good. I’m Camilla, the manager. You’re hired.” 

Gideon pumps a fist, and Harrow tries not to look at the way it makes her arm flex. “Alright! Let’s go.” 

Harrow shoots Camilla a look that could have killed a lesser mortal. “You’re hiring her? Just like that? What the hell? You made me go through a three month training period when I started here!” 

“Times change,” Camilla says. “Plus, that training period was mostly so that I could make sure you wouldn’t pass out on company time.”

“That was one time, Hect. _One._ ” 

Camilla shrugs. “Whatever. Look at her, she’s perfect for this. She’s basically a bartender and a bouncer all in one.” 

“Hell yeah,” Gideon says gleefully. “You want me to bounce someone, they’re gone. I’ll bounce their ass like a fucking basketball.” 

“I believe the correct term for that is _dribble_ ,” Camilla says, “but irrespective of that, your offer is welcome. I’ll make a note of that.” 

Harrow glares at Camilla, resenting the way it doesn’t even register. Curse Camilla Hect for being one of the only people on the planet who can resist her glare. Curse Camilla Hect for being able to look death in the face and make _her_ blink. “This is a terrible decision.” 

“Too bad. Deal with it.” Camilla turns to leave, then looks back at Gideon for a moment. “Hey, is that a Dominicus Rising shirt? They’re Harrow’s favorite band.”

“I hate you,” Harrow says to her, and Camilla just raises her middle finger before walking away. 

Gideon leans against the bar, wearing a smug look that makes Harrow want to break a bottle over her head. Her eyes are a bright, warm gold, something that Harrow has never seen before in her life. It’s disconcerting. 

“So,” Gideon says, smirking. “You’re selective about hiring, huh?” 

“Shut up,” Harrow growls. 

Ianthe walks up to them, carrying a clipboard and pencil. “You’re the newbie?” she asks, glancing at Gideon with something resembling distaste. “Come back tomorrow at four pm. Harry’s going to show you the ropes.” 

“Don’t call me that,” Harrow says automatically, the response coming swiftly with the kind of speed that can only be borne of near-constant repetition; then, as the rest of Ianthe’s sentence sinks in: “Wait, I’m _what_?” 

“You’re training her,” Ianthe says. She’s smiling pleasantly, but Harrow catches the demonic flash of schadenfreude behind it. “Try not to kill each other, will you?” 

Then she’s gone, and Harrow and Gideon are left staring at each other. 

“Well, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” Gideon says. “Until then.” She gives Harrow a big grin and an ironic two-fingered salute, then walks out the door. 

Harrow slides down and deliberately hits her head against the counter.

//

Harrow doesn’t know how exactly she finds the willpower to go to work the next day. It involves a self-indulgent sulking session and a therapeutic hour spent rearranging the skull-shaped cacti pots sitting on her windowsill, but she finally drags herself out the door bearing the heavy resignation of the fact that she’ll have to work with Gideon Nav. 

Gideon is already there when Harrow arrives, sitting on one of the bar stools like she owns the place, her posture painfully poor. Harrow glares at her, kicking her leg in the hope of tipping her off the stool. 

She doesn't even budge. Harrow mentally curses her lack of lower body strength. 

“Skipped leg day, huh?” Gideon says, raising an eyebrow in amusement. Harrow is completely unamused. “Well, at least you’re consistently weak.” 

Harrow considers strangling her right there and letting the big dumb idiot choke out and die of asphyxiation on the counter. The only thing stopping her is her doubtfulness that her hands will be able to fit around Gideon’s neck. 

“Come on,” she snaps, curling a beckoning finger at Gideon. “Follow me, and try not to speak.” 

Gideon gets off the stool with a maddening nonchalance, lazily stretching like a cat in the sun. “You do realize that most people use their index finger to summon someone, right?” 

“Right. The middle finger was on purpose, Griddle. Shut up and walk.” 

Gideon just grins at her, like having her name butchered into a piece of kitchenware is the best thing that’s ever happened to her. Her smile is absolutely maddening; it’s long and crooked and so fucking confident, the left corner of her mouth curled slightly higher than the right, pure cockiness resting at the edges of her lips. Harrow has to look away. 

“Here’s the bar,” she says shortly, pointing unnecessarily. “Wine glasses are up there. They hang upside down. Try not to break them.” 

Gideon reaches up to poke at the glasses. Harrow debates slapping her hand away from them, but realizes that she isn’t tall enough. Damn Gideon Nav for being built like a tree.

Harrow points to the wall of bottles behind the counter, multi-colored glass containers rising high in a pyramid of alcohol. “All the hard liquor is here. It used to be sorted by type, but last weekend Palamedes arranged every bottle in alphabetical order, because he is a pedant and a domestic terrorist. Don’t try and switch it back. Don’t mess with the bottles. To clarify, _don’t mess with the bottles_ means don’t touch them unless you’re actively pouring from them.” 

Gideon runs a hand through her hair, making it stand up in a sloppy, messy wave. Even in the dim light of the bar, it shines like fire. Harrow looks away before she gets burned. 

“You know that I’ve done this before, right?” Gideon asks. “Like, you’re aware that I was a bartender in college. I told you that yesterday.” 

Harrow curls her lip contemptuously. “I don’t make a point of memorizing the inane drivel that comes out of your irreverent mouth, Griddle.” 

“Whatever. In case you missed the memo: _I was a bartender in college._ I know what I’m doing.” 

Harrow glares. Gideon scowls. Animosity rises in the air between them, hanging heavily like ozone before a lightning strike.

“Hey, hey!” a voice calls to them. Harrow turns to see Corona walking in, wearing her typical tight crop top, waving to both of them with a beautifully kind smile that even being related to an evil scumbag of a skank like Ianthe had never managed to wipe from her face. 

“Corona,” Harrow says in acknowledgement. She looks over at Gideon, begrudgingly prepared to introduce the two of them, and it’s only then that she notices Gideon is staring at Corona hard enough to burn a hole in the front of her shirt. 

Harrow rolls her eyes so hard it hurts. _Of course._

“Harrow!” Corona beams at her. “Is this the new girl?” She looks to Gideon, politely ignoring the blatant staring. “What’s your name?” 

“Gideon,” says Gideon, “but you can call me anything you like.” As Harrow watches in disgust, Gideon’s face contorts strangely. It could be an attempt at a wink, or it could be a minor facial spasm. 

Harrow rather uncharitably hopes it’s the latter. 

“Come on, Nav,” she says, grabbing Gideon’s arm while pointedly not noticing the fact that her hand barely wraps halfway around Gideon’s bicep. “The tour’s not over.” 

“I’ve already seen everything I need to,” Gideon says, sneaking another look at Corona, who’s now wiping down tables at the front. “I mean, _goddamn…_ ” 

When Harrow shuts Gideon’s hand in the stockroom door five minutes later, she doesn’t even bother pretending it’s an accident. 

//

Their first shift together is an unequivocal disaster. 

It’s just her, Gideon, and Corona behind the bar tonight, the three of them having been thrown on shift together by Ianthe, who seemed to think it was a grand idea to make Harrow watch Gideon lust after Corona for six hours. 

Harrow’s not affected by it, not really. It’s just sickening to watch Gideon openly stare at Corona every time the girl bends down to get a beer or leans over the countertop to hand someone their drink. 

Their night goes something like this: Corona works, Gideon stares, Harrow fumes. 

Harrow is sloppy with drinks tonight, annoyance making her hands unsteadier than usual. Instead of mixing drinks with her usual ease, she finds herself spilling alcohol everywhere, liquor dripping through her fingers with a stinging burn. 

It’s annoying. It’s really fucking annoying, and it’s all Gideon’s fault. 

“God _damn_ it,” Harrow mutters, her hands freezing on a bottle of Jack Daniels as her mind gets caught up in orange hair and burnt-gold eyes again. She can’t work with Gideon in her space; it’s like a foreign planet spinning into her orbit, eclipsing her light, destroying her focus. 

“Hey there,” Gideon says, and Harrow jumps, narrowly avoiding a spill. She turns to face Gideon, her features already shifting from her normal frown to a deluxe, extra bitchiness included frown. 

“What,” Harrow snaps, more of a statement than a question. 

Gideon reaches out and plucks the bottle from Harrow’s hands. “Are you going through withdrawal or something? Your hands are shaking like a stripper’s ass and you’ve spilled like, four things in the time I’ve been watching you.” 

“You haven’t been watching me,” Harrow says icily. “You’ve been watching Corona.” 

“My point still stands,” Gideon says, a smirk rising on her face. “You know, I can’t believe you thought _I’d_ be the fuckup.” 

“I’m not normally like this, okay?” Harrow growls. “I just can’t concentrate tonight.” 

Gideon’s smirk grows bigger. “Is it because of my astounding hotness? Because I’ve been known to have that effect on a lot of women.” 

Harrow feels a simmering crimson blush running under her skin, and she’s thankful that the bar is too dimly lit for Gideon to see. “ _Die in a fire_ , Nav.” 

“Yo,” a guy shouts from where he’s sitting at the bar. It’s the guy Harrow had been serving before Gideon stepped in and interrupted with her bumbling ineptitude. “Are you gonna get my drink or stand there talking all night?” 

Gideon waves a hand at him in a _be right there_ sort of gesture, then turns back to Harrow. “You don’t get to give me shit about not fucking up when here you are, literally fucking up. You gave me shit even before I started! What kind of twisted control freak are you?” 

“I’m just proactive,” Harrow says. “Now give me the bottle.”

Gideon holds the bottle away from her. “I’ve got this one. You just sit back on your bony little butt and watch a professional at work.” 

Every cell in Harrow’s body bursts into flames, burning in anger. “Nav, give me the fucking bottle.” She reaches forward, but Gideon pushes her away with an elbow. It’s not a hard push; it’s not even close. It’s soft and effortless, almost gentle, and that’s even more frustrating. 

“Here,” Gideon says to the guy, setting the glass down in front of him. “Sorry about the wait. Had some...technical difficulties.” She shoots a look at Harrow, and Harrow glares right back. 

The guy looks at her in disgust. “That took fucking forever, dude. I’m not tipping for this shit.” 

This is the part where Harrow would usually fix the customer with an icy stare and intimidate them into tipping anyways. Instead, as she watches, Gideon crosses her arms and looks thoughtful. 

“Okay, how about this,” Gideon says cheerfully. “We arm wrestle. If I win, you tip me. If you win, you get another drink. On the house.” 

Internally, Harrow’s jaw drops to the floor. Externally, she frowns just a tiny bit harder than she already is. 

“Nav, you moron,” she hisses, kicking the back of Gideon’s heel to get her attention. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” 

“Worried about me?” Gideon grins. “Don’t be. I mean, have you seen my arms?” 

“That's _not_ what I meant,” Harrow says. “You can’t go around arm wrestling customers. Honestly, were you dropped on your head as a child?” 

The guy at the counter downs the rest of his drink and gives Gideon a drunken smile. “Let’s go, then.” 

Gideon glances back at Harrow for a moment, smirking again, and then sets her arm on the table. She joins hands with the guy, bracing herself against the counter. 

“To the table,” she says, her fingers wrapping around his. 

And Harrow, who has a laundry list of things she should be doing instead - serving more customers, cleaning the bar, stabbing her eyes out with a pickle fork - finds herself watching with slightly shallow breath as the start of an inevitable shitstorm edges closer. 

“Go,” the guy says to Gideon, and the two of them start pushing. Harrow bites her lip slightly, watching the way that Gideon’s arm strains against the white cotton of her shirt sleeve. There’s a curious feeling working its way around the inside of her chest, a sort of burning prickle, like a spark trapped between her ribcage and her heart. 

Gideon slams the guy's hand to the bartop with a loud thud, so hard that the wood lets out an ominous cracking sound. The people sitting closest to him let out a few loud cheers, laughing loudly and pounding each other on the back. 

The guy scowls at Gideon, finally digging out a crumpled wad of cash and tossing it at her. “You got lucky, bitch.” 

“Yeah,” Gideon says, slipping the money into her back pocket with a quick movement that Harrow’s eyes dart to catch before she can stop herself. “Got lucky with your _mom_ last night.” 

The guy slams his glass against the bar and gets off the stool, walking towards the door in a huff. Gideon turns to Harrow, smiling widely. 

“How cool was that?” 

“You’re a despicable idiot,” Harrow says, all her usual eloquence strangely lost in the curve of Gideon’s arm as she leans back against the bar. She tries to find better words, but it’s a struggle. “You’re a moron, and an idiot, and a fool, and a chump…”

“You said idiot twice,” Gideon points out, unfazed.

Harrow grabs the towel off her shoulder and snaps it at Gideon like a whip. “What kind of _professional_ challenges their customers to arm wrestling contests? Is there even one brain cell in your rotten head, or is it just no thoughts, head empty?” 

“Please,” Gideon says. “I have plenty of thots.” 

“You insufferable - ” 

“Hey, guys,” Corona says, walking over to them. Her white Locked Tomb shirt is perfectly, purely spotless, and perfectly, pressingly tight, and Harrow hates her for it, just a tiny bit. “What’s going on here?” 

“I arm wrestled a guy for tips,” Gideon says, her voice carrying the pride of a small child who has captured a toad and is dying to show it off. “Harrow watched.” 

Corona raises a golden eyebrow. “Really? So you guys are getting along well, then? That’s great.” She smiles at Gideon with her warm, evangelical smile, and reaches out to pat Harrow on the arm. Harrow flinches away from the touch. 

“We’re getting on just splendidly,” Harrow deadpans. “Like cats and dogs, if the dogs were large, ugly, and terminally stupid.” 

Gideon snorts. “More like if the cats were evil, scrawny little goths with massive sticks up their butts.” 

Corona’s gaze flicks back and forth between them like she’s watching a tennis match. Harrow lets out a sigh of exasperation and tosses her towel to the floor. 

“I’m leaving,” she says, walking away. “Tell Hect I quit.” 

“No you don’t,” Camilla says, emerging from the storeroom. “Get back to work.” 

Gideon snickers gleefully, murmuring something that sounds like “ _owned_.” Harrow closes her eyes and uses all her powers of manifestation to wish instantaneous death upon Gideon Nav. 

It doesn’t work, so she sighs and stalks to the other end of the bar, leaving as much space as she can between them. 

//

If the first shift together was hell, everything after that is the ninth circle. 

Harrow is stuck with Gideon on almost every shift now, a form of torture that rivals the Greek-mythicized Fields of Punishment in terms of sheer torment. Ianthe, who had immediately picked up on the hatred that Harrow held for Gideon, had given her an evil smile as she filled out the schedule for the next two weeks, saying “I am going to create an environment that is so toxic” in tones of fake pleasantry as she proceeded to write down _Gideon and Harrow_ in every empty slot available. She’d even used black Sharpie, so there was no way for Harrow to change it. 

Harrow had realized, in that moment, that Ianthe Tridentarius was even more evil than she’d originally thought.

Harrow tried begging everyone in the Locked Tomb to switch - she’d even sucked up her pride and asked _Naberius Tern_ to cover her, which was like talking to a brick wall plastered with an Abercrombie advertisement - but no one had wanted to. Changing shifts was something that almost always incurred Ianthe’s wrath, and no one wanted to risk it.

So there it was, an inescapable fact: Harrow would be working with Gideon every shift for the upcoming two weeks. 

It wouldn’t be so bad, Harrow thought, if Gideon had been a normal level of irritating. Harrow is irritated by practically everyone on the planet, ranging from Corona to Ianthe - the two opposite ends of the spectrum both in terms of annoyingness and chest size - and it’s practically an inherent reflex to dislike, if not despise, almost everyone she meets. But with Gideon, it’s different. 

With Gideon, she falls easily into a bitter push and pull like it’s a road she’s walked a thousand times before. It’s like they hated each other before they even knew each other, like they hated each other in a life far removed from this one; through all the shallow arguments and petty insults, there’s a deep and vitriolic familiarity to their mutual hatred. 

And now they’re stuck together for two weeks. 

“This is the bad place,” Harrow mutters to herself, staring balefully at the black Sharpie scrawl on the schedule. Ianthe’s handwriting trails across the page in bold, angular letters, somehow managing to convey pure malice within every diabolical stroke of the pen. 

“I’m not thrilled about it either, sugarlips,” Gideon calls from where she’s sitting at the bar. It’s half an hour before opening time, and they’re supposed to be setting up; instead, Gideon is slouched on top of one of the stools with a suspicious-looking magazine open in her hands. 

Harrow casts her a dubious glance. “That magazine is disgusting,” she informs Gideon loftily. She squints surreptitiously at the cover, which depicts a woman with boobs almost as big as Coronabeth Tridentarius’s. The lurid red lettering above her spells out _Frontline Titties of the Fifth._ “There’s no way that's an actual publication.” 

“I’m reading for the articles,” says Gideon, unperturbed. “Although the pictures are pretty nice too.” 

Harrow snorts disparagingly, eyes raking over Gideon’s figure in search of something else to criticize. “Is that supposed to be a _shirt_?” 

Gideon looks down at herself, plucking at the front of the offending garment. “What’s wrong with it?” 

“There’s a naked woman on the front and it doesn’t even have sleeves. You look like a classless gym rat.” 

“Damn, Nonagesimus,” Gideon says, grinning at her. “You sure know how to charm a lady.” 

Harrow grabs one of the bar rags and throws it at her; Gideon catches it with insulting ease. 

“Oh, come on,” Gideon says. “I’ve got to show off the goods.” She flexes one arm, and Harrow’s eyes track the movement against her will. 

“Besides,” Gideon continues, “I’d rather wear this than dress like you. You do realize that you don’t have to wear black every single day of your life, don’t you? Pack it up, Wednesday Addams.” 

Harrow scoffs. “Wearing black is perfectly normal for a bartender.” 

“Yeah, but you don’t look like a bartender. You look like the reanimated corpse of a goth teenager whose funeral was held in Hot Topic.” Gideon squints at her, those annoying golden eyes flashing like stars. “And what the hell are you wearing in your ears? Are those bits of bone?”

“Yes, and if you don’t stop critiquing my manner of attire, I’ll rip out your knucklebones and add to my collection.” Harrow reaches for her ear automatically, runs her fingers over her earrings. The ridges of bone are comfortingly smooth. 

Gideon just smiles at her. “I love it when you threaten me. It’s cute.” 

“Stop. _Talking_.” Harrow can feel herself blushing for some reason, and it’s one of the most horrible things that’s ever happened to her. The air in her lungs doesn't want to let her breathe. 

“Okay,” Gideon says amicably, returning to her magazine. Harrow narrows her eyes, suspicious of the easy surrender. 

“What did you do?” she asks. 

Gideon blinks at her innocently, fooling absolutely no one. “Nothing.” 

“You’re being slightly less antagonistic than usual,” Harrow says stiffly, “which causes me to suspect that you’ve done something stupid. What is it?”

“Nothing,” Gideon repeats. “Just decorated a little.” She glances off into the distance for a second, then buries her face in her magazine with an air of supreme unconcern. 

Harrow scans the bar slowly, looking for unwelcome additions of a decorative manner. The Locked Tomb looks the same as it always does; polished wood tables, dim golden lights overhead, glowing neon beer signs on the wall behind the counter, and Camilla’s collection of throwing knives arranged in a mounted display case. It’s not until Harrow looks at the wall closest to the door that she spots it. 

There, on the corkboard that’s usually covered in weekly specials and flyers made by enterprising yet awful garage bands, is a terrible collage of pin-up girls, haphazardly shoved together and stapled to the board. It’s even more of an eyesore than Gideon herself. 

Harrow stomps over and tries to remove it, to no avail. The thing is joined to the board like a ligament to a bone. She grits her teeth and tries harder, but all she gets for her effort is a hand cramp. 

“Nav!” she snaps, out of patience. “Come remove this obscene rag from our board or I’ll remove your head from your body.” 

“Obscene rag? I spent time on that, you know.” Gideon ambles over, her pace infuriatingly slow. “Thought it’d brighten the place up a little.” 

Harrow goes back to pulling at the edges of the paper, and Gideon snorts out a laugh. She looms up behind Harrow, reaching around her, and rips out the staples with insulting ease. 

For one moment - one blink, one breath - Gideon’s front is pressed to Harrow’s back and Harrow feels a wrenching sensation deep in her stomach, like she’s being ripped in half and made whole at the same time. 

And then Gideon’s touch is gone, something that leaves Harrow filled with a wretched, empty sort of gratitude. She can hear the blood rushing in her ears, threatening to drown her in a deluge of sanguine sound. 

Gideon smiles crookedly at her, holding out the collage. “Would you like to keep it? Might look nice on your bedroom wall.” 

Harrow stomps on her foot, slamming her black boot down onto Gideon’s ratty black Converse hightop with all her strength. She swipes the flyer from Gideon’s hand, tossing it into the nearest trash can.

“Mother trucker, dude!” Gideon yelps. “That hurt like a buttcheek on a stick.” 

“Good,” Harrow spits, walking away from her. She takes up refuge behind the counter, her heart beating strangely. She feels a riot in her chest, a resonance in her bones, an aching and unfamiliar cascade of emotion disgustingly encased within the walls of her body, and at the center of it all is Gideon Nav. 

It’s horrifying, and Harrow hates it with every fiber of her being. 

She makes a mental note to stay away from Gideon Nav. 

//

But of course, she can’t. 

“This is an affront to my existence,” Harrow complains bitterly, watching with unmitigated loathing as Gideon carries a tray of drinks over to the table by the door. Gideon is holding the tray in one hand, a feat which Harrow has never been able to duplicate; _she’s_ always had to use two hands and all of her upper body strength - which, as Gideon had said gleefully last shift, is _literally nonexistent._

 _Like your brain_ , Harrow had shot back, and stomped away in a huff. 

Ianthe leans against the sticky surface of the bartop and smirks, her mouth an vile curve of evil apathy. She’s the other person working behind the bar tonight, having inserted herself into the schedule to complete the awful triangular misery that is a three way shift with Gideon, Harrow, and Ianthe. “She is pretty terrible, isn’t she? If I didn’t find her so repulsive, I’d almost admire her for it.” 

Gideon sets down drinks in front of the boy and the girl sitting at the far table, smiling at them with her usual idiotic grin. Harrow vaguely recognizes them as the two teenagers who have been frequenting the bar lately despite their youthful scrawniness and inability to even pass as college students, let alone adults of legal drinking age. 

“And those two,” Ianthe says reflectively, pointing one bone-thin, bone-white finger towards the teenagers, “are simply dreadful. Pathologically awful.”

Harrow, though she had been thinking almost the same thing, now felt the urge to defend the Awful Teens rather than suffer the sickening fate of being in agreement with Ianthe Tridentarius. 

Gideon comes walking back to the bar, her strides long and lazy, and leans against the countertop. She looks so at ease, so nonchalantly cavalier that it makes something pull in Harrow’s chest. 

Harrow pointedly ignores this.

“Griddle,” she snaps. “How old are those abominations over there?” 

Gideon looks blankly at her, uncomprehending. Harrow snaps her fingers impatiently. “The awful teenagers who are sitting by the door, Griddle. Keep up.”

“Jeannemary and Isaac?” Gideon shrugs. “Eighteen. They’re freshmen at Canaan University.” 

“Oh,” Ianthe says, her expression now a mask of unholy delight. “Why Harry, they’re practically the same age as you!” 

“For the last time,” Harrow snaps, a mix of embarrassment and exasperation welling up inside of her, “I am _twenty-two._ And you’re only four years older than me.” 

Gideon makes a face of extreme disgust, which pretty much sums up how Harrow feels about that putrid sobriquet. “ _Harry?_ ” 

Ianthe ignores her, waving a hand insouciantly as she addresses Harrow. “Four years older and a few hundred thousand dollars richer than you, darling.” 

“Yeah?” Gideon asks loudly. “If you’re so rich, then why are you working at a bar?”

For some reason, Gideon’s eyes are suddenly blazing at Ianthe with an unmistakable sense of dislike. Harrow catches herself staring, trapped in those burning pools of gold, before she manages to look away. 

“Well, it wasn’t my first choice,” Ianthe drawls. “ _I_ wanted to simply dwell in the ruinous splendors of high society for the rest of my life; however, my dear sister Coronabeth seems to believe in charity, and so she secured us both jobs here in this amusing little establishment. I wasn’t all too keen on it, but what can I say? There are some benefits.” 

She eyes Harrow languidly; Harrow just raises an eyebrow. Ianthe’s apparent interest in her treads the line between manufactured disgust and insincere attraction, and Harrow has never once believed that it was real in the slightest. Even if Ianthe Tridentarius were not a hideous horror of unholy creation, wholly incapable of genuine emotion, she wouldn’t love Harrow. 

_No one_ would love Harrow. 

Harrow snaps herself out of this line of thought before it follows an all too well-trodden pathway that spirals down into the darkest pits of her mind, and looks up to find that Gideon is glaring at Ianthe once more. 

“Get bent,” Gideon says irritatedly. “I would say _eat the rich_ , but I’d never eat you. You’d probably taste like sour milk and classism.” 

Ianthe lets out a high-pitched, mirthless laugh, regarding Gideon as if she were a somewhat amusing pet. Gideon glowers, crossing her arms in a way that Harrow is sure was calculated to make them flex as much as possible. They stay locked in a stand-off, perfectly parallel to each other; Harrow, by way of her positioning, creates the uncomfortable tip of an ungainly equilateral triangle. 

To Harrow’s surprise, Ianthe is the first to crack. Her eyes flick between Gideon and Harrow once, twice, three times before she sighs dramatically and drifts away, headed in the direction of the storeroom. 

“Yeah, fuck you!” Gideon calls after her. “And just so you know, Corona is the hotter twin! Like, a million times hotter!” She slumps down at the counter, elbows sticking slightly to the surface.

“Why did you let those children in?” Harrow asks, annoyed and making no attempt to hide it. 

Gideon shrugs. “They might be underage, but if they’re going to be drinking, I’d rather have them here where I can keep an eye on them rather than getting blackout at some frat house. I wanna know they're safe, you know?” 

Harrow looks at Gideon, usual brash attitude stripped down to casual yet vulnerable honesty, and something softens inside her. For the first time, Harrow almost doesn’t hate her. 

It’s a very unnerving thought, and it makes Harrow bite down on her lip until it bleeds. She doesn’t want to feel anything for Gideon Nav. 

“Hmph,” she says, kicking the back of Gideon’s shoe harder than usual in an attempt at compensation for her unwanted feelings. “Get up, Nav. There’s customers to serve.” 

//

By the next Friday night, all traces of goodwill that Harrow might have had towards Gideon in that one moment of weakness are safely vanished. In their place lies a burning, frustrated hatred so powerfully bitter that Harrow can practically taste it. In terms of sheer bitterness, it’s right up there with the disastrous lemon-zest cake that Corona had tried to make for the Locked Tomb employees last month - not that Harrow had tried more than a tiny bite of that. 

Gideon, of course, had eaten at least half the cake by herself, choking down slice after slice with a slightly pained smile aimed less at Corona’s face and more at her chest. Corona had rewarded her by planting a kiss on each cheek, which had caused a visible shutdown of Gideon’s mental capacities. The entire spectacle had made Harrow’s lip curl in distaste. 

She curls her lip in exactly the same way now, watching Gideon pour shots for a group of giggling blonde girls at the bar.

It’s a Friday night and the Locked Tomb is packed to the brim with college kids, regulars, and a few men in baseball caps who showed up to watch the night’s game but ended up stuck with the cooking show that Camilla always has playing - _Chopped: Combat Edition!_ , in which knives are used both to cut food (fifty percent of the time) and to duel with competitors (the other fifty percent of the time).

So it’s pretty much a full house, and Harrow knows that she’s got customers to serve, but she can’t stop looking at Gideon.

Gideon smiles at one of the blonde girls - the one with hair almost as bright as Coronabeth's - with her trademark cocky grin. She leans forward and twists a lock of the girl’s hair around her finger, and instead of breaking a bottle over Gideon’s hand like any self respecting person would do, the girl breaks out into a high-pitched laugh. 

Then, as Harrow watches, the girl takes out a hundred dollar bill and slides it across the table to Gideon.

A _hundred dollars_ . That’s half as much as Harrow gets in one night, usually. (When Gideon, in her usual mocking fashion, had suggested that maybe it was because _people don’t come to the bar to get glared at by your beady little goth eyes, maybe try a smile, Nonagesimus,_ Harrow had given a moment of legitimate thought to murdering her and burying her body in the back parking lot. The only thing stopping her was the amount of digging she’d have to do for a hole big enough to fit Gideon’s corpse in.) 

Harrow sets down a bottle of Blue Moon for one of the college kids, then turns to Palamedes, who’s pouring out glasses of Scotch with a surgical precision that would make fully credentialed medical doctors weep in envy. 

“Do you see that?” Harrow waves a hand towards Gideon, the gesture sharp and irritable. 

Palamedes looks up at her, adjusting his glasses slightly. “Do I see Gideon?” 

“Do you see the tips she’s getting?” Harrow asks, her voice rising in twin pitches of indignance and disbelief. “Who gets that much from one person?” 

“Corona,” Palamedes says, after taking a moment to think about it. 

“Besides her,” Harrow says impatiently. “What are they tipping her for, anyway? Playing with their bleached-blonde hair? I would rather remove my own ribs and skewer myself through the aorta than let an oaf like that touch my head.” 

“Would you really?” Palamedes asks. His tone sounds half meditative and half concerned.

The blonde girls get to their feet with much hair flipping and hip swaying, which in Harrow’s opinion makes them look like nothing so much as a field of wheat blowing in the breeze, and drop a pile of worn fifty dollar bills onto the bar. The last girl throws another twenty on top, winking at Gideon, before the lot of them head for the door. 

Harrow lets out an illogical and unwelcome breath of relief. 

Gideon scoops up the money, grinning broadly, and makes her way over to them. “Hey, Nonagesimus, Sex Pal, check it out.” 

Palamedes pinches the top of his nose, looking mildly exasperated. “Gideon, I told you, don’t call me that.” 

“Sorry, Pal. No can do. It’s not my fault your mother didn’t take sex jokes into account when she named you.” Gideon waves the stack of bills at them gleefully. “Look at all this money! It’s like I killed a boss in a video game and they dropped their loot for my kickass avatar to pick up.” 

“Congratulations,” Harrow snips. “You got a bunch of vacuous bimbos to leave you some tips. What a shining paragon of success.” 

Gideon folds the bills in half, shoving them into her back pocket. “Jealous?” 

Harrow chokes slightly. “That is the most absurd accusation I’ve ever heard.” 

“Is it, Nonagesimus?” Gideon asks, her voice dropping slightly. “ _Is_ it?” 

One of Gideon’s eyebrows is raised, her smile unbearably smug and crooked, and something in Harrow aches to reach forward and smooth out the tiny crease above Gideon’s left eye. It’s a baseless urge that sickens her on a physical level; she can practically feel the bile crawling its way up her throat. 

“Ahem,” Palamedes says, fully pronouncing the word instead of clearing his throat like any other person in the world would do. “If we’re finished here, I would like to point out that there are other customers waiting to be served.” 

“Right,” Gideon says. “Just watch, Nonagesimus. You think I’m getting good tips now? You ain’t seen nothing yet.” She makes a motion like she’s rolling up the sleeves of her shirt - a blatant affectation, as her shirt is entirely sleeveless - and flashes another of her unbearable smiles at Harrow. 

Palamedes lets out a little cough like he’s trying not to laugh. Harrow shoots him a withering glare, under which he shrinks gratifyingly, and goes to get more tequila from the storeroom.

//

By one in the morning the Locked Tomb is only half-full, the late crowd streaming in and drifting to the worn leather sofas pushed against one of the brick walls. The air in the bar is warm and slightly hazy, the environment slowly tipping from rowdy to laidback, but Harrow has never felt more awake. 

She’s watched Gideon all night, even though she’s tried not to; watched her pick up dozens of stacks of bills, the money almost always coming from girls leaning a little too far over the counter. Gideon gives out smiles like they cost nothing, rewarding girl after girl with that asymmetrical grin, and Harrow’s stomach knots a little more every time it happens. 

There’s an awful feeling rising inside of her, a caustic mix of hatred and anger and something else unfamiliar but altogether unwelcome. She swallows loathing like air, choking on alien emotion; she doesn’t know why she feels this way, but she knows who’s to blame. 

Gideon swipes another pile of money from the counter, flicking through the bills with a quick and effortless motion. She turns to smile at Harrow, slow and lazy, and something in Harrow snaps with the clean break of a fractured bone. 

Harrow strides forward and grabs the front of Gideon’s shirt, dragging her out from behind the counter into the direction of the storeroom. Gideon follows without protest, and Harrow realizes that she’s letting herself be led along. Gideon’s unresistant compliance infuriates Harrow even more, but she shoves Gideon into the storeroom and slams the door closed, then releases her shirt like it’s made of radioactive material.

“Hello to you too,” Gideon says, smoothing down the front of her shirt. “Is there a problem?” 

Harrow crosses her arms and takes a deep breath, cataloguing her surroundings. The only light comes from the luminescent glow of the lava lamp that Silas Octakiseron had installed for unknown reasons shortly before Camilla fired him. Although he’s gone, the lamp remains, and now, with the overhead lights off, it casts the darkened storeroom in a surreal lavender hue. 

Gideon inhales quietly and Harrow senses a certain gravity about this moment. There’s the weight of something unknowable and inevitable pressing down around them, binding them together with blood and bone. 

They’re nothing but shadows in the dark, both of them. As Harrow looks at the ground, Gideon’s shadow merges with hers to become one. 

Gideon’s red hair shines even in the dim light, burning like a flame against the darkness, and it’s this one detail that brings Harrow back to reality. 

“You,” she says, glad to hear that her voice comes out as steadily acerbic as it always has. “You are the problem.” 

Gideon pats her pocket, overflowing with money, and smirks. “Is this about my tips? Don’t worry, I can teach you how to work it like I do. Or I can try, at least - there’s only so much you can do with a personality like yours.” 

“You can’t just flirt with every idiotic female who walks into the Locked Tomb,” Harrow says icily. “It’s giving us a bad reputation.” 

Gideon’s expression clouds over and clears in almost the same moment, and then she does something unexpected. She starts laughing. Loudly.

Harrow shifts, feeling defensive for reasons that she doesn't yet understand. “Exactly _what_ is so funny, Nav?” 

“Oh, man,” Gideon says, grinning at her. “You know, I was just joking about you being jealous earlier, but you _actually are._ You’re jealous.” 

Harrow blushes so hard it hurts, the rush of heated blood to her face horribly instantaneous. She wishes desperately for some kind of face paint to cover herself. “Don’t be stupid.” 

“I can’t believe this. The high and mighty Harrowhark Nonagesimus, jealous that a few girls are flirting with me.” 

“If by _a few girls_ you mean half the population of Canaan, then you might be correct in your quantitative estimate,” Harrow snaps. “But as for your insinuation of jealousy, that’s simply ludicrous.” 

Gideon isn’t even listening. She steps closer to Harrow, her smile wider than it's ever been. “You totally think I’m hot.” 

“I don’t - get _away_ from me, Nav.” 

“You think I’m stunningly attractive - ” 

“Shut up.” 

“Irresistible - ” 

“Stop talking.” 

“Oh, you want to kiss me so bad it makes you look _stupid_.” 

Harrow grits her teeth and pushes at Gideon’s chest ineffectively. “Nav, _shut the fuck up._ I’m not attracted to you in any capacity. I would rather mutilate my own vertebrae than consider you attractive. I would rather pull out my teeth one by one than even consider you as a potential partner.” 

“Partner?” Gideon repeats scornfully. “What are we, cowboys?” But there’s a subtle decrease in her smile, a trace of something like disappointment hovering at the corner of her mouth; it’s a small change but one that’s unmissable to Harrow, who’s spent the last month inadvertently memorizing every aspect of Gideon Nav’s face. 

It shouldn’t be of consequence to her, but something in Harrow’s gut twists at the sight.

“I get it,” Gideon says, her voice quieter now. “You hate me. I get it. You didn’t have to drag me in here to tell me this, okay? I know. You’ve made it kind of obvious.” 

Gideon turns to leave, her eyes gleaming like molten gold as they catch the light. Harrow stands rooted to the spot, her chest aching with that same desperate feeling that’s become all too familiar to her over the past four weeks, and for the first time, she can put a name to it. 

Desire claws its way down Harrowhark Nonagesimus’s throat, her ribs straining against a restless kind of yearning that feels big enough to break her in two. 

“Nav,” she hears herself saying, her voice independent of her will.

“Harrow, I’ve had enough,” Gideon says, half turning back towards her. “I get it, okay, you hate me and you’ll never - ” 

Harrow raises her arms and pushes Gideon until her back is up against the door, once again noting how Gideon yields beneath her touch. 

Gideon frowns down at her. “Harrow?” 

“Learn to listen, Griddle,” Harrow says, resting her hand against Gideon’s chest. “I said _stop talking_.” 

She inhales deeply, and with her pulse thundering in her veins - with every drop of blood singing in panicked ecstasy - she reaches up and presses her lips against Gideon’s. 

It’s a graceless kiss at first, their mouths crushed together with inelegant fervor, but then they manage to find the rhythm. Gideon kisses her back, bringing one hand to rest at the small of her back. Harrow bites down on Gideon’s lower lip before she can stop herself, and the noise that Gideon makes in response makes Harrow’s entire body burn feverishly. 

Harrow is eventually the one who pulls back first; she exhales sharply, unable to process the jumble of feelings trapped in her chest. Gideon is staring at her, mouth hanging slightly open. 

“Um,” Gideon says eloquently. “What just happened?” 

She’s looking at Harrow in confusion, her eyes shining that awful, beautiful shade of gold, her hand still pressed to Harrow’s back. As the weight of realization starts to settle in, Harrow slowly feels a growing sense of horror overwhelming her. 

She kissed Gideon Nav. What the fuck. 

She _kissed_ Gideon _Nav._

“I have to go,” Harrow blurts, pulling free of Gideon’s arms and yanking the storeroom door open. She sprints down the hallway - or attempts to, though it’s more like a normal person’s speed walk - and doesn’t stop until she reaches the main area of the bar again. 

Palamedes is at the counter, collecting shot glasses; Harrow grabs his arm. 

“Palamedes,” she says, her words coming out cool and collected despite the absolute clusterfuck of chaos that’s currently happening in her brain. “I’m leaving now. You and Nav can finish closing tonight. Don’t try to argue with me, or I’ll tell Hect about that incident with the tequila bottles and the My Little Pony boxer briefs.” 

She’s already walking away before Palamedes can reply. She leaves out the side door, the cold night air hitting her like a brick as she steps outside, and drives home ten miles over the speed limit. 

Whatever just happened, one thing is miserably clear. She has completely and utterly failed at staying away from Gideon.

//

“Is there a reason you’re hiding back here?” 

“I’m not hiding.” 

“Are you sure?” 

Harrow looks up from the potatoes lying untouched in front of her, frowning. She taps the knife in her hand against the cutting board. “I’m _not_ _hiding_ , Hect.” 

Camilla Hect shrugs noncommittally from where she’s sitting atop the kitchen counter, a flagrant health violation that would surely see them booked seven ways from Sunday if the Health and Safety Department still visited the Locked Tomb. (They had been scared off last year, when they had caught sight of Naberius Tern doing sit ups on top of the bar and been so scarred by the experience that they’d vowed never to come back. Harrow couldn't blame them.) 

“So you’re not hiding,” Camilla says. “You're just working the kitchen for no reason, when I know for a fact that you hate being on kitchen duty.” 

“I don’t hate kitchen duty.” 

Camilla points at her. “You’re not even pretending to peel those potatoes.” 

Harrow picks up a potato and slices at it halfheartedly; a few peels fall off, along with a substantial chunk of perfectly good potato. “The patrons of the Locked Tomb will be perfectly fine waiting a few inconsequential minutes for their chili fries.” 

Raising one eyebrow at her, Camilla leans over and snatches both knife and potato from Harrow’s hands. She wields the knife expertly, leaving the potato stripped bare in a matter of seconds, then twirls the blade in her hand until it’s nothing but a blur of silver between her fingers. 

“I can wait all day, Nonagesimus,” she says, now spinning the knife with her eyes closed just to be a show-off. 

Harrow lets out a pained sigh.

It had taken a full fifteen minutes of arguing with Naberius before he agreed to switch shifts with her this week so she wouldn’t have to work with Gideon, an argument that had culminated in Harrow somehow agreeing to pay his gym membership for the next two months. It had hit her hard, both in her pride and her wallet, but it had been worth it to escape Gideon. 

She’s on day three of avoiding Gideon now, and it’s gone fairly well so far in that Harrow hasn’t yet run into her. However, it’s going fairly badly when it comes to the actual work. Harrow is a bartender, not a chef, and although there might be some people (Corona and Palamedes) who can do both, she is decidedly not one of them. 

The only food she’s been able to make with any semblance of success is an edible but decidedly tasteless soup - which, as Ianthe was quick to point out when she wandered into the kitchen and dipped a finger into the soup pot, is _not on the Locked Tomb menu. Also, it needs two teaspoons of salt._

Harrow had just glared at her and turned back to the stove. She hadn’t added the salt. 

She liked the soup just how it was; it was good, even if it was lacking in flavor, the process of making it had served as a temporary distraction from her thoughts. (She’d been thinking about Gideon a lot the last few days, much to her frustration; as if it wasn’t bad enough seeing her every day at work, now she was filling Harrow’s thoughts too. For Harrow, it had been a long three days of almost biting through her bottom lip whenever the memory of the kiss had managed to surface from the depths where she had tried to bury it.) 

Camilla starts sharpening the blade of her knife against the stainless steel counter, reminding Harrow of her presence. “Are you avoiding Nav?” 

Harrow stiffens in surprise, inadvertently knocking two potatoes onto the floor. “No. Don’t be stupid.” 

“Really,” Camilla says. A question, not a statement. “Because she seems to think you are.” 

“Have you been talking to her about me?” Harrow asks, her stomach twisting itself into a sickly knot at the thought of Camilla Hect and Gideon Nav discussing her. Surely Nav hadn’t told her everything. Or had she? That was exactly the kind of stupid thing that Nav would do. In fact, the more Harrow thinks about it, the more she’s sure that Camilla knows. 

“Just in passing,” Camilla says, and nothing more.

Harrow scrutinizes Camilla’s face, looking for a sign that she knows about...whatever the hell happened the other night, but she gets nothing. Camilla’s face, always a closed book, is more closed than ever. It’s practically locked with a deadbolt. 

“Don’t make things weird with her,” Camilla says at last. “It’s hard enough getting Ianthe to make the schedule as it is; you fucking around with your shifts isn’t helping.” 

“Your advice is heard and duly ignored, Hect.” 

“As long as you heard it. One more thing…” 

“What now?” Harrow asks curtly, her patience waning. 

“Corona wants us all to go to Pitch House tomorrow night. It’s one of those bonding nights.” 

“That karaoke bar where Septimus works? Absolutely not.” 

Camilla fixes her with an unwavering stare, her dark grey eyes boring into Harrow. “You’re going, Nonagesimus.” 

“Like hell I’m going to subject myself to another of those _bonding nights_.” The emphasis that Harrow places on the last two words contrives to surround them with disdainful quotation marks. “I remember what happened at the last one.” The memory alone is enough to make her cringe.

“One unfortunate incident at the bowling alley does not excuse you from other nights out,” Camilla says. “You’re coming, and that’s final. Corona wants us all there.” She blinks slightly when she says Corona’s name, which for Camilla is the equivalent of a full-body blush.

If Harrow were educated in the ways of crushes and relationships, she would have thrown this new revelation in Camilla’s face; as it is, she simply shifts her feet uncomfortably and looks away. The silence is broken by Palamedes, who walks in and wanders over to the stove. 

“Hey, Cam,” he says. “Hi, Harrow. Did you make this soup?” 

“Yes,” Harrow says, a tinge of pride creeping into her voice. She’s proud of the soup. She’d followed a recipe and chopped the vegetables herself and everything. 

Palamedes dips his spoon into the pot, blowing on the soup to cool it before trying a taste. He swallows, looking thoughtful, and then nods. “It’s very nice, but it could use some salt.” 

“That’s what I told her,” says an unwelcome voice, cutting through the air with a piercing drawl. Ianthe Tridentarius slides into view, leaning against the doorframe with a nonchalant air that somehow manages to be arrogant. “Harry doesn’t believe in salt. Or any other seasonings, for that matter.” 

“Enough,” Harrow huffs, insulted on behalf of her soup. “This is a bar, not the Food Network. My soup is perfectly satisfactory.” 

“Oh, I’m sure it is,” Ianthe offers. “To people who lost all their taste buds in a tragic accident.” 

Palamedes, perhaps sensing that Harrow is close to throwing a ladleful of soup at Ianthe’s head, steps in. “Are you coming to Pitch House tomorrow night, Harrow?” 

“Yes, are you?” Ianthe asks, smirking unpleasantly. “ _Gideon_ is going, you know.” 

“No,” Harrow says, ignoring the weird fluttery sensation in her stomach at the mention of Gideon’s name. Maybe the soup is making her sick after all. “I will definitely not be attending.” 

“Perfect,” Ianthe says. “I’ll tell Corona that you’re coming and to put you down for a performance.” With that, she’s gone. 

There’s a clattering sound from the hallway; a moment later, the awful teenagers come rushing into the kitchen. Harrow stares at them in distaste. “Who let _you_ in?” 

“Gideon,” the girl - Joanie? Jeannemary? - says, her admiring tone of voice bordering on hero-worship, and Harrow’s stomach flutters weirdly again. The girl looks to Camilla, who’s now juggling three knives, and her eyes go wide as plates. “Wow, can you teach me how to do that?” 

“I’d rather not,” Camilla says dryly. “My car doesn't have enough gas to drive you to the hospital after you inevitably sever one of your limbs.” 

The boy - Ivan? Isaac? - wanders over to the stove, sticking a spoon into the soup pot. “I’m trying this,” he announces, and then, a moment later: “This soup needs more salt. Who made it?” 

All eyes turn to Harrow. With a long-suffering sigh, she walks out of the kitchen. 

//

Harrow shows up at Pitch House ten minutes early the next night, which still isn’t early enough to beat the Tridentarii. The twins are waiting outside the bar, Corona lounging on the bench by the door and Ianthe sitting on the curb with a cigarette; at Harrow’s approach, they look up.

“Harrow,” Corona says, smiling. “I’m so glad you decided to come.” 

“Corona,” Harrow says, inclining her head slightly. “Well, I could hardly bring myself to miss such an enjoyable outing.” She delivers this line with a deadpan expression, hoping that Coronabeth catches on to the fact that she is being one hundred and fifty percent sarcastic. Corona just smiles wider. 

Ianthe flicks a bit of ash from the end of her cigarette, looking Harrow up and down in a way that makes Harrow’s skin crawl with discomfort. “Harry,” she says lazily. “You look just wonderful tonight. I must have missed the announcement from Vogue that funereal corpse chic was back in style.” 

Naberius Tern looms up out of the darkness, wearing what looks to be, horrifyingly, skin tight workout clothes. Harrow averts her eyes before that image is irrevocably burned into her brain. “Are we going in?” he mumbles. 

Corona doesn’t reply, just rises from the bench in the manner of a queen who has been newly crowned; Naberius jumps to open the door, letting her, Ianthe, and Harrow file past. 

Harrow’s first thought upon entering the bar is that coming here tonight was a mistake. A _large_ mistake. 

The room is packed with people in various stages of drunkenness, and most of them are singing to themselves, which makes Harrow wish that she were back at the Locked Tomb so she could at least have the barrier of a counter between herself and the rancid masses of humanity. There’s a stage at the far end of the room with flickering strobe lights and a truly horrible mirrorball hanging from the ceiling, its iridescent surface golden rather than silver. Strangely, along one wall, there seems to be a bookshelf full of untidily stacked tomes. Altogether, it makes for an unsettling atmosphere. 

“Ladies!” says a soft, sweet voice, and Dulcinea Septimus makes her way over to them, politely pushing through a crowd of drunken carolers. “And Naberius, of course. We saved you a table.” 

Harrow and the Tridentarii follow her to a long table near the bookshelf, close enough to the stage that Harrow can hear all too clearly the echoing strains of someone testing the microphone with what appears to be a song about broken glass. 

Dulcinea and Corona strike up small talk, while Naberius and Harrow sit in stony silence and Ianthe starts chain smoking in flagrant violation of the No Smoking sign on the wall. Somewhere between Corona’s third gossip story and Ianthe’s fourth cigarette, Harrow realizes that she really regrets coming here tonight. 

And that regret is only made stronger when she looks towards the door and sees who’s arrived. 

Camilla, Palamedes, Gideon, and an unfamiliar skinny person in a long coat are standing just inside the doorway, scanning the room for them. Harrow slouches down in her seat, her posture atrociously bad for what might be the first time in her life, but it's to no avail; Dulcinea has already waved them over. 

“Hey,” Gideon says cheerfully. “Sorry we’re late. Had a little holdup.” 

“A holdup which was entirely Nav’s fault,” Camilla says, sliding into the chair that Gideon had pulled out for herself. Palamedes sits down on the same chair, his frame so skinny that he fits perfectly alongside her. 

Gideon holds out her hands defensively. “How was it _my_ fault?” 

“Your piece of shit Jeep broke down on us; that’s your fault.” Camilla looks like she’s about to say more, but then she catches sight of Corona and falls silent. 

Gideon mutters something and throws herself into the chair next to Camilla and Palamedes, and it's only then that Harrow allows herself to sneak a half-decent look at her. 

Bad decision. 

Gideon is wearing a typically terrible outfit: acid-washed black jeans, scuffed black Converse hightops, and a white t-shirt that reads “LIKES GIRLS” in bold black letters, as if anyone in history of the known universe has ever looked at Gideon Nav and doubted that fact. For some unfathomable reason she’s got aviator sunglasses on, even though the room is barely bright enough to see properly as it is, and her hair is a tousled mess. 

It’s one of the worst things Harrow has ever seen. It also does something completely embarrassing to her; there’s an uncomfortably warm feeling spreading through her body, lighting her up from the inside out. 

Gideon turns, catching her staring, and Harrow glares at her. She’s unsure what else to do. 

A diversion is caused in the form of the tall person in the trenchcoat stumbling and falling, and the moment between Gideon and Harrow thankfully breaks. The trenchcoat unbuttons itself and falls to the floor, revealing its contents to be none other than the Awful Teens, stacked on top of each other like shot glasses.

“Ow,” Jeannemary gasps, bending forward to tip Isaac off her shoulders and onto the floor. “For such a skinny guy, you sure are heavy.” 

Ianthe raises one perfectly arched eyebrow. “You brought _them_ here?” 

“Nav insisted,” Camilla says. “I was tempted to dump them out on the side of the road en route…” 

“ _Camilla_ ,” Jeannemary whines reproachfully. “Don’t be mean.” 

“We know you like us really,” Isaac adds. His hair flops in front of his eyes, and Jeannemary pushes it back for him. They pile into a chair to Gideon’s right, sharing a seat just like Camilla and Palamedes, and Gideon grins at them. The sight of her smile, happy and carefree, makes something loosen in Harrow’s chest. 

That _something_ immediately ties itself into a painful knot of the Gordian variety when she notices what Dulcinea Septimus is doing: smiling coyly at Gideon. With the dumbstruck horror of someone witnessing a car crash, Harrow watches as Dulcinea reaches across the table to rest a hand on Gideon’s arm.

“Gideon, is it?” Dulcinea asks, her voice sweetly suggestive in a way that Harrow would never, ever be able to replicate. “Such a fascinating name.” 

“Thanks,” Gideon says, her smile growing wider. Her eyes flick over to Harrow for a split second, then away again; she lets Dulcinea’s hand remain where it is. 

Harrow’s stomach drops violently. She looks away from the sickening sight before her only to make eye contact with Ianthe, who looks deeply amused at Harrow’s discomfort. _Bitch._

Dulcinea waves towards the bar, and in an astonishingly short amount of time they’ve all got drinks in front of them. Ianthe leans over and takes a sip of Harrow’s, to Harrow’s great disgust. She mentally makes a note to avoid drinking out of that cup for the rest of the night.

Harrow chances a look at Gideon and sees that she’s frowning in confusion, like she’s missed the plot somewhere. It’s a very familiar expression to see on Gideon’s face, but while it would have once been annoying, Harrow now finds it endearing in a maddening sort of way. She scrambles for something that will counteract the disgusting affection rising up in her, and falls back on the comforting familiarity of insults. 

“Griddle,” she says, and Gideon turns towards her expectantly. A few strands of orange hair fall over her forehead, and Harrow’s fingers itch to brush them back for her. “You look pretty tonight.” 

God, what is _happening_ to her? 

Corona chokes on her beer, Camilla and Ianthe stare at her with disconcertingly similar expressions, and Dulcinea breaks into a coughing fit. Gideon’s expression goes through multiple stages of processing: surprise, suspicion, confusion, embarrassment, and finally happiness. She’s blushing under her sunglasses, Harrow can see, and that slightly alleviates her horror. But not really.

“What?” Gideon finally manages, and Harrow can feel herself turning bright red.

“ _Shitty!_ ” she almost yells, face burning. “You look shitty tonight. Really shitty. Abominably shitty.” She grabs for her drink, remembers that Ianthe contaminated it, snatches Isaac’s instead, and takes a big sip.

“Hey, that was mine,” Isaac objects, and Harrow scoffs at him. 

“You can drink when your prefrontal cortex is fully developed,” she says shortly. 

Gideon is still visibly in a state of shock, but Harrow doesn’t dare look at her again. She fervently hopes that the earth will open up and swallow her whole.

“Well,” Camilla says finally, breaking the silence that’s fallen over the table, “tonight is much more interesting than I thought it would be. Cheers.” 

//

It takes a couple hours and a lot of drinks, but eventually members of their party get up to perform on the karaoke stage. Isaac and Jeannemary, on a high from too many drinks that were manifestly too strong for them, team up for a rendition of Taylor Swift’s 22, perhaps in an effort to convince the bouncers that they aren’t the fourteen year olds they look like; Dulcinea goes for Sick Again by Led Zeppelin, a choice that Harrow thinks is all too fitting considering that the woman has spent half the night coughing sporadically. 

Camilla and Corona climb onstage and proceed to sing a duet version of Toxic that would make Britney Spears blush like a virgin. Gideon wolf whistles at them, and Harrow is drunk enough that she lets herself smile at it, just a tiny bit.

Ianthe jabs her in the ribs with one sharp finger and leans over; Harrow surreptitiously leans away, but not far enough to avoid Ianthe’s whisper of “Well, don’t they look friendly.” 

“They seem to be very good friends,” Harrow mutters back, tight-lipped, as she watches Corona press up against Camilla and execute a filthy body roll that would be more suited to a strip club than a karaoke bar.

“Makes you think, doesn’t it?” Ianthe says languidly. “Who _else_ among our little group could be...acquaintances of that manner.” 

Harrow’s eyes involuntarily dart across the table to Gideon before she thinks better of it, then curses herself for the lapse in judgement. Ianthe uncharacteristically doesn’t say anything, but there’s a flash of something unfamiliar in her eyes for just a second before she blinks it away. It’s not the triumph Harrow would have expected; if she didn’t know Ianthe’s soulless character better, she might have said it was disappointment. 

Camilla and Corona jump off the stage to wild applause from the crowd, drifting in the direction of the bar, Corona’s hand straying to the back pocket of Camilla’s grey jeans. The next singer shuffles onstage, and Harrow grimaces as she realizes who it is - Ortus Nigenad, a bartender formerly of The Locked Tomb and currently of Pitch House, because Camilla fired him after too many customers complained about his horrible poetry recitations. 

Ortus clears his throat, adjusts the microphone a few times, and starts singing one of the painfully long Grateful Dead songs. This is Harrow’s cue to leave, since she’s not into self-inflicted torture. 

She gets up and pushes through the crowd, making her way towards the bathrooms down the hall. There’s an empty room next to the broom closet, lit a soft pink and filled with several comfortable looking pieces of furniture, and she decides it’s as good a place as any to hide out for the next twenty-seven minutes while Ortus alternately bores and depresses the regulars of Pitch House. 

Harrow’s just sat down on the end of a couch that’s too soft to be trustworthy when she hears a string of curses being mumbled outside the door. She looks up to see Gideon in the doorway, sunglasses crooked on her face, hair a disastrous mess. 

“Stubbed my toe on the door,” Gideon says by way of explanation, and then: “Whoa, what’s with this room?” 

“It’s the lounge, Griddle,” Harrow says loftily. “Obviously.” She actually has no idea what the room is for, other than possibly a place where Dulcinea Septimus comes to rest her fragile bones, but Gideon doesn’t have to know that; it’s the principle of the thing. 

Gideon shrugs and sits on the arm of the couch, her posture aggressively poor, one leg draped over the back of the sofa in what appears to be some kind of aggressively lesbian gymnastics move. She pushes her sunglasses up onto her head, making her hair even messier than it already was, and then points towards the corner of the room, where a tiny elephant carving is sitting next to the table lamp. “Hey, look.” 

Harrow glances over. “What?” 

“It’s the elephant in the room,” Gideon says, smirking slightly. She’s clearly proud of the joke, and Harrow can only think: _of course you like puns._ “Get it?” 

“Not getting it was never the problem,” Harrow says. “It’s just not funny.” 

(It’s a little funny, but she’s not about to admit it. If Gideon Nav says something funny, Harrow will wait till she gets home to laugh).

Gideon blinks at her offendedly, those annoyingly warm, amber-gold eyes flashing beautifully at her, and Harrow’s stomach drops like an object in free fall. “So we’re not talking about it?” 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Harrow replies curtly, ignoring the voice in the back of her head that’s screaming _liar, liar_ and also _look_ , _Gideon’s eyes are really pretty._

“If that’s the way you want to play it,” Gideon says, one shoulder rising in a shrug that falls just short of truly unaffected. 

Harrow looks at Gideon, eyes tracing the lines of her face; the curve of her jaw, the column of her throat. Her gaze catches on the bow of Gideon’s lips, perfect and full and beautiful.

“Games are for children,” Harrow says. “We’re not playing anything.”

Gideon settles herself on the couch, leaning back against the arm, legs stretched out towards Harrow. She’s taking up far more than her fair share of space, and Harrow shoves at her shin, to no avail. 

“So we’re not going to talk about the kiss,” Gideon says. “Noted. Are we going to talk about how you called me pretty earlier?” 

“Did not,” Harrow snaps. The memory of that moment is already locked away in her brain, barricaded behind an iron door for all eternity. If she lets herself think about it for even a moment, it’s enough to make her physically ill.

Gideon smirks, just a little, a crooked curve at the edge of her mouth, like she knows exactly how hard Harrow is bullshitting her right now. Harrow’s self control swallows itself whole.

“It’s okay to admit that you're into me,” Gideon says. “I mean, I’m into _you_. The whole doom and gloom goth chick aesthetic is a little over the top, but hey, it works for me. Like really, really works…” 

Harrow closes her eyes, bids a fond farewell to her last shred of dignity, and e throws herself into Gideon Nav’s lap like her life depends on it. She straddles Gideon’s thighs, places one hand on the side of her stupidly gorgeous face, and kisses her just like she’s dreamed of doing since that night in the storeroom. 

Gideon pulls back, staring at her in surprise, eyes wide. “What are we - ” 

“Shut up,” Harrow says, horrifyingly desperate to have Gideon’s mouth on hers again. “Kiss me.” 

Gideon shuts up and kisses her again. Her tongue slides over Harrow’s bottom lip, finds its way into Harrow’s mouth, presses against the roof of Harrow’s mouth. Harrow lets out a sound that’s half whine, half moan; under normal circumstances she would rather cut her own tongue out than let herself be heard like this, but she can’t string two thoughts together right now. Gideon is an amazing kisser, and Harrow hates her for it.

Gideon pulls back again, buries her face in Harrow’s neck before she can complain. Harrow closes her eyes as Gideon’s mouth finds her pulse point, sucking gently. She moans again as Gideon’s teeth scrape over the mark. 

“Ah,” Harrow mumbles, struggling to think of the words. “Don’t leave marks.” 

“Too late,” Gideon replies, and Harrow can feel Gideon’s smile against her neck. When Gideon bites her neck again, Harrow forgets to be annoyed about the hickeys. 

Gideon pushes one thigh up between Harrow’s legs, adding pressure where Harrow needs it most, and Harrow lets out a poorly stifled gasp. She’s unbearably turned on, embarrassingly close to the edge just from a few seconds of contact, and she must be insane to be doing this. Must be insane to be sitting in Gideon’s lap, wet and burning and aching for something she doesn’t dare admit.

She grinds down against Gideon’s leg, forgetting to keep herself quiet, and Gideon laughs in her ear. 

“Ha, you’re easy,” Gideon says, her voice raspy with arousal. There’s no mockery in it, but Harrow can’t help feeling exposed anyway. 

“I’m _not_ ,” Harrow says, biting the words off viciously. Denial is a safe place for her, and she’s not ready to leave. “Fuck you, Nav.” 

“We could do it that way,” Gideon says. She slips a hand under Harrow’s shirt, rests it at the top of her jeans, flicks open the button. “But the way you’re going, I think you’d rather have it the other way around.” 

Harrow bites down on her own lip to keep from agreeing, pushes herself harder against Gideon’s body. Gideon’s fingers feel like fire against her skin, and Harrow is burning for more, every cell in her body begging for Gideon’s touch. 

“Do it, then,” Harrow says, keeping her voice determinedly steady. She refuses to let Gideon see how much she wants this, refuses to admit that it’s already a lost cause. “Shut up and do it.” 

“Hey,” Gideon says. Her hand drifts into Harrow’s pants, a finger dipping below the edge of the fabric to the hot skin underneath. The touch is enough to drive Harrow up the wall. “I’m only doing this if you want it. Do you want it?”

“Nav,” Harrow says, trying not to sound desperate and knowing that she's probably doing a piss-poor job of it, “if you don’t fuck me in the next five seconds, I’m going to do it myself.” 

Gideon grins at her, that stupidly annoying, heartwarming smile, and slips her hand between Harrow’s legs. Her fingers slide against the wetness there, and Harrow can’t help but moan out loud. She grinds down against Gideon’s hand.

“You’re so wet,” Gideon says, her voice slightly awed. She pushes her thumb against Harrow’s clit gently and Harrow clenches around nothing, wanting more. 

“No shit,” Harrow grits out. 

“Alright, alright,” Gideon says breathlessly, and if Harrow had been able to pay more attention, she would have noticed that Gideon is looking at her with something close to open devotion. “Calm down. I’ve got you.” 

Harrow has a whole angry response ready on the tip of her tongue, but it’s lost in a moan when Gideon slides a finger into her. It’s slow at first, as if Gideon isn’t quite sure that what she’s doing is okay, and Harrow resents that; she tips forward, presses her forehead against Gideon’s. 

“More,” Harrow gasps, pushing herself farther down on Gideon’s hand. Gideon slips another finger in and starts to fuck her properly, thrusting deeper in a way that has Harrow’s eyes rolling back in her head, stars dancing across her vision, whole constellations unraveling before her as she loses herself in blissful pleasure. 

“Goddamn, look at you,” Gideon murmurs, pressing her palm against Harrow’s clit. She curls her fingers against Harrow’s front wall, and Harrow lets out a moan that’s downright embarrassing. “You’re so hot, holy shit…” 

“Fuck,” Harrow chokes out, feeling the coil of arousal in her stomach wind tighter. “Don’t stop.” She winds one hand into Gideon’s hair, running her fingers through the orange waves just for something to hold on to, and is rewarded by a strangled moan from Gideon. Harrow mentally files that away for future reference, wondering when _future reference_ became an established concept in her mind, and then promptly forgets it as Gideon pushes a third finger in. Harrow tenses; she knows she’s close, knows that _Gideon_ is the reason she’s close - 

“Come for me,” Gideon says. “Harrow - ” 

And that’s it for Harrow. She comes with a gasp, clenching around Gideon’s fingers as Gideon fucks her through the orgasm, and collapses with her head resting in the spot between Gideon’s neck and shoulder. Gideon pulls her fingers out, strokes Harrow gently through the aftershocks for a minute, then takes her hand out of Harrow’s pants. She rests her hand on Harrow’s back, and it’s uncomfortably close to a hug. 

“What the fuck,” Harrow says, still slightly out of breath. “Are you wiping your hand off on my shirt?” 

“Maybe.” 

“That's disgusting.” 

“Hey, you just rode my fingers,” Gideon points out. “I think I’m allowed to use your clothes for whatever I want.” 

Harrow grimaces. “That sounds even more debauched than the usual rubbish that comes out of your mouth.” She climbs off Gideon’s lap and sits down on the couch, making sure that they’re not touching at all. Now that she’s no longer insanely turned on, she’s slowly starting to realize what they’ve just done, and the reality is horrifying. 

“I still don’t like you,” Harrow blurts out. 

The corner of Gideon’s mouth quirks upwards.“Whatever you say.” 

“I’m serious,” Harrow hisses. She’s embarrassed beyond belief, and she isn’t sure who she hates more right now: Gideon for being so good at this, or herself for giving in to it. 

“Okay, so it’s hate sex,” Gideon says easily. “I can live with that. Next time, though, we should take off more clothes.” She winks at Harrow, who fights down the stubborn and unwanted spike of heat that flares through her at the thought of a naked Gideon Nav.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Nav,” Harrow says in acid tones. She stands up from the couch, straightening out her clothes. “There won’t be a next time.” 

//

There’s a next time. 

Harrow isn’t sure how it happens, exactly. It might be a casual touch from Gideon, passing by on the way to the liquor bottles; it might be Harrow’s gaze lingering on Gideon a moment too long; it might be the flirty girl who leans a little too far and giggles a little too loudly when Gideon brings her and her blonde clone sorority sisters their tequila shots. 

(It’s definitely the last one. Harrow doesn’t want to think about it.) 

They end up in the storeroom again, surrounded by crates and barrels, Harrow pressed up against the door with Gideon on her knees in front of her. 

“I don’t know, my twilit princess,” Gideon says, looking up at Harrow with a gleam in her golden eyes. “This looks a hell of a lot like a next time to me.” 

“Enough talking,” Harrow snaps back at her, trying to ignore the way that _twilit princess_ makes her heart flutter in her chest. “You have better things to do with your mouth.” 

Gideon smiles at her like an idiot, and Harrow feels her traitorous heart doing the fluttering thing again. It’s horrendous and unsettling and she kind of doesn’t want it to stop. “What?” 

“Nothing, it’s just…” Gideon presses a quick kiss to the inside of Harrow’s thigh, and Harrow can’t stop her hips from pushing forward, looking for more. “I’ve always wanted to hear a hot girl say that to me. It’s the ultimate fantasy, you know?” 

“Well, I won’t be saying it again if you don’t cut the small talk,” Harrow says. “Now shut up and eat me out.” 

“It’s really hot when you’re bossy,” Gideon says conversationally, and before Harrow can reprimand her again, she leans forward and puts her mouth right where Harrow wants it. 

Harrow leans back against the door, biting her lip to hold in her moans. Her hands curl into Gideon’s hair just a little too easily, like they’ve done this a thousand times, like it’s where they belong. In retrospect, she should’ve seen this for the warning sign it is. 

//

It becomes a thing, somehow. 

They spend every shift they have together flinging lewd jokes (Gideon) and barbed insults (Harrow) back and forth, but at the end of the night, they inevitably find their way to the storeroom or the bathroom. Gideon pushes Harrow up against the door, sits her on the sink, spreads her legs and fucks her until she can barely breathe. It happens over and over.

And although Harrow absolutely loathes to admit it, she’s begun to treasure the moments that live between them: Gideon, smiling up at her from her place between Harrow’s legs; Gideon, slipping her fingers into Harrow and curling them until Harrow’s seeing stars; Gideon, kissing Harrow messily but beautifully in the post-orgasm haze. Lately everything seems to come back to Gideon, like Harrow’s life is rebuilding itself around her. It’s one of the most horrifying realizations she’s ever had. 

“Don’t just sit around, Nav,” Harrow says, shoving a spray bottle at Gideon and tossing a rag at her face. “Honestly, you’re useless. It’s almost opening time.” 

Gideon just grins at her, winks in a way that ties Harrow’s stomach in vile knots, and starts wiping down the tables. Harrow watches her work, covertly staring at the way that Gideon’s arms flex as she pushes the rag across the top of each table.

“It’s nice that you two are friends now,” Camilla says, and Harrow flinches inwardly. She hadn’t even noticed Camilla's approach. Camilla Hect moves more stealthily than a Prius hybrid - it’s one of the hallmarks of her personality - and Harrow still hasn’t quite gotten used to it. 

“Friends?” Harrow asks, her voice dripping with manufactured skepticism. “Please. Don’t be delusional, Hect.” 

Camilla kicks her feet up onto one of the bar stools, leaning back against the counter. “You look pretty friendly to me.” 

Harrow glances over at Gideon, who’s whistling a terribly off-key rendition of that one Cee Lo Green song, and then back at Camilla. “You have a warped perception of friendship.” 

Camilla shrugs one shoulder. “If you say so, Nonagesimus,” she drawls. And then, motioning toward Harrow’s neck: “You've got a little something there.” 

Harrow angles her head until she can see her reflection in the mirrored surface of one of the wine glasses hanging over the bar. She swears under her breath as she realizes that there’s an unmistakable dark mark smudged across the skin over her pulse point. Fucking Gideon Nav. 

“Like I said,” Camilla says, one corner of her mouth turning slightly upwards. “It’s nice that you’re friends.” 

Harrow scoffs loudly and walks away with as much dignity as she can muster. As she passes by the table that Gideon’s cleaning, Gideon winks at her again. It does nothing to ameliorate her mood. 

“ _Fuck you_ ,” Harrow hisses at her. 

“ _Is that a promise?_ ” Gideon murmurs in response, and Harrow feels her face burning. She can hear Camilla laughing lowly behind her, like she knows exactly what’s passing between them. Harrow walks out of the room without a backwards look, resolving to avoid Gideon for the rest of the shift as revenge for the hickey that Harrow had _expressly_ told her not to leave. 

(Later that night, when Camilla and Palamedes are shutting things down, Harrow finds herself in the storeroom with Gideon’s hand down the front of her jeans once again. She can’t help but think that there’s something about this that feels frighteningly inevitable.)

//

A mere two weeks after the ill-fated karaoke night, Harrow is sitting in the Locked Tomb’s kitchen with Gideon, Camilla, Palamedes, Naberius, and the Awful Teens - who had once again snuck into the bar, this time before it even opened to the public - when Coronabeth Tridentarius barges into the room holding a lurid orange flyer. Harrow’s eyes start watering just from looking at the thing. 

“Hey, guys,” Corona says cheerfully, running a hand gracefully through her perfect golden hair in her patented Behold and Adore Me move. Harrow’s gaze automatically flicks to Gideon, sure that she’ll be drooling over Corona as usual, but Gideon looks almost completely unaffected. In fact, she’s barely even looking at Corona.

Harrow allows herself a miniscule smile, then feels stupid about it. There’s no reason that she should be happy about this. 

“Hi,” Isaac replies, staring at Corona in open wonder. Next to him, Jeannemary rolls her eyes and kicks him hard in the shin. 

“Ow!” Isaac yelps, rubbing at his injured leg. Harrow studies Jeannemary with new interest. Maybe she isn’t the irritating toddler that Harrow had originally taken her for. 

Corona flashes her dazzling smile around at all of them, then brandishes the flyer that she’s holding. “I’ve come up with another bonding night activity!”

Harrow freezes, already dreading what’s to come. The prospect of another bonding night hands over her head like a naked sword, and she mentally starts flipping through possible excuses not to go.

“I hope it’s not karaoke again,” Naberius grunts from where he’s sitting in the corner, and for once, Harrow has to agree with him. “That was horrible.” 

“Oh, Babs,” Corona says dismissively. “Don’t be so dull all the time. No wonder you’re single.” She flips the flyer over and begins reading from it. “ _A special dining event will be hosted tomorrow night at the Erebos. All items on the dinner menu will be 50% off, and parties of ten or more will get an additional discount.”_

“Oh, sweet,” Gideon says. “Cheap food? Count me in.” 

Naberius frowns. “Wasn’t that place involved with an unresolved murder case two years ago?” 

“I think that the head chef and the manager had a threesome with the hostess once,” Camilla says wryly. “On the kitchen table.” 

“I’m pretty sure it’s been charged with five separate health code violations in the last six months,” Palamedes adds. 

Gideon just shrugs. “I’m still down. It can’t be much worse than the food here.” 

“We’ll come,” Isaac and Jeannemary chime in, their voices perfectly synchronized, and then frown at each other, muttering among themselves. Harrow isn’t quite sure what they’re saying, but it sounds something like “Jeannemary, _I_ was going to speak for both of us” and “Don’t be ridiculous, we both know that if we needed an official spokesperson, it would definitely be me.” 

Ianthe slinks into the room, leaning insouciantly against the stove with apparently no aversion to the burning hot surface. “As lovely as this lame little friendship circle gathering seems to be, it’s almost time to open and nothing is ready.” 

“You could do something to help, you know,” Gideon points out. “Instead of just hanging around the bar like a really shitty ornamental piece.” 

“Is someone talking to me?” Ianthe asks, casually inspecting the long nails on one of her hands. “I could swear I heard a little voice in the distance. It sounded like a goblin...or maybe a troll...” 

“Tridentarius is regrettably right,” Camilla says, waving a hand at them. “Get to work. I don’t pay you just to stand around and talk.” 

“You don’t pay us in general,” Harrow points out. “My paycheck is two weeks late.” 

Camilla rolls her eyes. “Pal will sort that out at some point. Now go set up.” 

The Awful Teens and the Tridentarii drift out of the room, followed by Naberius and Palamedes, but Gideon shifts over until she’s standing next to Harrow, their shoulders almost brushing. “Hey.” 

“What,” Harrow says flatly, horribly conscious of the fact that Camilla is still in the room. 

Gideon pushes a hand through her hair. “Are you gonna come to dinner with us?” 

“Not if I can help it.” 

“You should.” Gideon hits her lightly on the arm, just for a second, and Harrow tries not to lean into the touch. “I’ll buy, if you want.” 

“No,” Harrow says. “If you think I’m driving all the way across town just to get food poisoning from that nauseating excuse for a restaurant, you are sorely mistaken.” 

“You don’t have to drive,” Gideon says amiably. “I’ll come pick you up.” 

Harrow opens her mouth, the refusal already on the tip of her tongue, but something in Gideon’s eyes makes her want to say yes. She considers it, just for a moment, but it’s not like it’s serious; it’s not like she’d ever agree to letting Gideon Nav take her to dinner.

“Okay,” Harrow says, immediately hating herself for it. 

Gideon’s eyes widen. “Wait, really?” 

“I said okay, didn’t I?” Harrow snaps. “Don’t make it weird, Nav.” 

“Might want to clean out your car first, Gideon,” Camilla calls over to them. “It’s worse than the town junkyard.” 

“Fuck you, Cam,” Gideon replies, but she’s grinning when she turns back to Harrow. “So I’ll be picking you up around eight?” 

//

That’s how Harrow finds herself sitting in the passenger seat of Gideon Nav’s battered Jeep at 8 pm on Saturday night, surrounded by coffee cups and not quite sure how she managed to get herself into this mess. 

“Sorry about the clutter,” Gideon says, flooring the gas and speeding through a stoplight as it turns red. “I took out most of the crap I had in here, but then I kind of got sidetracked watching this cool Youtube video where a guy made a sword entirely out of melted ring pops. Pretty cool, right?” 

“If you have the brain of a five year old,” Harrow replies. She reaches down to the floor of the car and gingerly picks up the object that’s been rolling against her feet for the last five minutes. It’s a paperback book, the spine heavily creased from use; Harrow flips it over to the front cover, which reads _Blades and Babes II: Lesbian Necromancers in Space!_ In other words, it looks like a low-grade work of wholly unrealistic pulp fiction, and Harrow strongly resents its creator. 

“Oh, so that’s where that went,” Gideon says, glancing over at her. “Thanks. I’ve been looking for ages.” 

Harrow curls her lip. “Where do you even get these putrid publications?” 

“My sources are wide and varied,” Gideon says. “I’ve got a never-ending supply of smutty lesbian books, if you ever want to borrow - ” 

“If you finish that sentence, I will unclip your seatbelt and shove you through the windshield.” 

The corner of Gideon’s mouth twitches upwards. “Cute.” 

Harrow looks out the window, trying her best to ignore the fact that Gideon exists. They drive in silence for a few minutes, the rattle of the engine blending incongruously with the quiet drone of pop punk music spilling from the staticked radio, and Harrow has almost lulled herself into a false sense of peace when Gideon swears under her breath and yanks the wheel hard to the left. The car spins almost 180 degrees, throwing Harrow against the side door as they come to a screeching stop in the restaurant parking lot. 

“Oops,” Gideon says, sounding genuinely apologetic. “Forgot the turning was here.” 

Harrow stabs wildly at the release button for her seatbelt, opens the door, and slides out of the Jeep as fast as she can. There’s a brief wait while Gideon attempts to lock up, although Harrow doesn’t know why she’s bothering. If anyone were to steal Gideon’s rattling death trap of a car, Harrow would be more sorry for the thief than for Gideon. 

“You’re a menace on the road,” Harrow says, leaning against the car door while Gideon pushes the lock button on her keys to no avail. “And your car’s a piece of shit.” 

“I think what you mean to say is _thank you for giving me a ride, Gideon_ ,” Gideon says, still poking at the button. “Or maybe _thank you for cleaning out your car for me, Gideon.”_

Harrow raises a skeptical eyebrow. “You call that clean?” 

“Hey, if you think it’s bad now, you should’ve seen it before.” Gideon shakes her keys, slapping the plastic block against her palm. “Come on, baby girl,” she says, and Harrow suffers a moment of acute distress - mixed with a tiny bit of quickly stifled happiness - before realizing that Gideon is talking to the _car_. “Don’t break down on me. You’re only three months overdue for an inspection.” 

“It’s not going to lock,” Harrow says impatiently. “Anyone in their right mind would know not to steal this pile of junk anyway. It’s got two tires in the scrapyard already.” 

Gideon sighs, shoving the keys into her pocket. “Fine, but if anyone steals her...” 

“They _won’t_ ,” Harrow says, thoroughly irritated with this whole saga. “Let’s go. I would prefer to get this dinner over with as soon as possible.” 

“As you wish,” Gideon says, grinning at her. “Shall we?” She holds out her arm to Harrow in a sarcastic mockery of courtesy; Harrow, dismayed by how much she wants to accept, slaps it away in a panic. 

“Stop being dumb, Nav,” she says, stalking off towards the entrance to the restaurant. “I’ll be taking enough psychic damage tonight without your usual idiocy adding to it.” 

//

Dinner is horrible. 

The Erebos is, surprisingly, packed with people; evidently the general population of Canaan had decided that tonight’s meal discount was worth braving the prospect of death by unresolved murder and/or food poisoning. Corona had managed to find them a spot in the corner of the room, where she’d shoved two tables together to serve as one long one, cheerfully waving away the protests of the sour-faced hostess. That isn’t the horrible part. 

The restaurant is mostly decorated with hideous minimalist paintings, the walls painted bone-white. Corona pronounces it to be _dreadfully dreary_ , while Gideon goes for a longer and more earthy statement, which is that it’s _fucking ugly in here, does their_ _interior designer live in a hospital? This is the decorational equivalent of what Smuckers Jam did to its logo, which was a criminal offense, by the way_. To Harrow, however, the décor is somewhat comforting, in a coldly calculating sort of way. That isn’t the horrible part, either. 

No, the horrible part is that this dinner has unwanted guests. 

Harrow stabs irritatedly at the dubious looking meat on her plate, scowling at the far end of the table, where Dulcinea Septimus is holding court. Gideon’s sitting down there with her, along with Palamedes, Jeannemary, Isaac, and an older couple whom Harrow recognizes as the owners of Pitch House: Magnus Quinn and Abigail Pent. (Harrow has run into Magnus a few times at the library, although never in the same sections of the stacks; his taste tends towards dignified British murder mysteries, while hers is firmly grounded in anatomical textbooks with an occasional occult novel thrown in.) 

While Harrow had been slightly pleased to see Magnus and Abigail, she was wildly unenthusiastic about Dulcinea’s presence, for reasons that she absolutely refuses to define. As she watches, Dulcinea leans into Gideon’s shoulder with a sigh that’s sickeningly sweet, or maybe just sickly. Gideon smiles at her - a gentle, soft-edged smile that Harrow’s never seen before - and something green and ghastly digs its sharp claws into Harrow’s stomach. 

She pokes at her food again in annoyance, then immediately regrets it as the meat falls apart at the tip of her fork. Squinting at the mess, Harrow frowns in consternation. She’s pretty sure that pot roast isn’t supposed to be purple in the middle.

“Hey,” Camilla says, tapping her knife against the edge of Harrow’s plate. Harrow glances over at her to see that Camilla has organized the food on her own plate into separate, untouching categories with a precision that would have brought a tear to the eye of a Swiss watchmaker. 

“What is it, Hect?” Harrow asks curtly. 

“Might want to lighten up on the doom and gloom expression,” Camilla says. “You look like you’re about to murder someone. Even more so than usual.”

Harrow grips her steak knife, wondering if she could get away with stabbing Camilla right here in the middle of the restaurant. She’s pretty sure that the stone-cold bitch of a hostess wouldn’t mind, and she’s definitely sure that it wouldn’t be the first murder to occur in this restaurant - the place practically screams _crime scene_.

“It wasn’t my idea to invite Septimus,” Camilla says, her voice lower now. 

Harrow glares at her. “What does that have to do with anything?” 

Camilla just raises one eyebrow in a spectacularly non-verbal show of of calling Harrow’s bullshit and goes back to sorting her green beans by length. 

At the other end of the table, Dulcinea places one hand on top of Gideon’s. Harrow feels sick at the sight, and wonders what would happen if she just vomited right here on the tablecloth. At least maybe then she’d have an excuse to escape this miserable disaster of a dinner.

The one good thing about tonight is that Ianthe is a no-show - apparently she’d had other plans for the night, which probably included shopping for leather pants or murdering a virgin, or maybe both. Harrow is truly thankful that she hadn’t showed up, because the ratio of tolerable people to untolerable people at this dinner is already skewed; Ianthe would have irretrievably upset the balance.

Dulcinea runs her hand along Gideon’s arm, and Harrow can’t take it anymore. She’s leaving here and now, even if she has to sit in the parking lot for an hour or walk home all by herself. She can’t stomach watching Gideon with Dulcinea for a moment longer; it’s making her even more nauseous than the actual food, which is both an impressive feat and a sign that she’s truly fucked. 

Harrow pushes her chair back with an alarming screech of metal against tile floor - Erebos being the kind of restaurant to have industrial-type metal chairs instead of handmade wooden ones - and walks to the door as fast as she can. Diners throughout the room stop mid-conversation to stare at her, but Harrow puts her head down and keeps going. She is absolutely not fucking having this. 

It’s freezing cold outside, and Harrow immediately regrets her decision, but it’s too late to change her mind. She’d rather give herself a full-frontal lobotomy than ever step foot in that restaurant again. 

The door flies open behind her and Gideon comes running out, catching up to her in about three steps. Harrow curses the ridiculous length of Gideon’s legs and keeps walking, turning her face away from Gideon. 

“Harrow, wait,” Gideon says. She places one hand lightly on Harrow’s shoulder, slowly and gently enough that Harrow can easily avoid the touch, which is probably the only reason that Harrow doesn’t immediately shrug away from it. “What’s up with you?” 

“Nothing,” Harrow says icily. “I just want to leave.” She yanks on the door handle of Gideon’s car; it opens with an ominous creaking sound, and she looks down at her palm to see that there’s rust smeared across it. “If you give me your keys, I can drive myself home. You don’t need to bother about me.” 

Gideon looks blank. “Uh, then how would I get home?” 

“I don’t know,” Harrow sneers. “I’m sure Dulcinea would be glad to take you home.” She places a heavy stress on these last three words, trying to sound as contemptous as possible. It comes out less like _condescending I-don’t-give-a-fuck_ and more like _jealous I-don’t-want-to-care-but-I do._

Gideon tips her head to one side now, staring at Harrow like she’s a quadratic formula. “I kinda don’t know what you’re talking about right now, but whatever. Get in the car and I’ll turn on the heat, okay? I know you’re freezing.” 

Harrow wants to say something grandiose and dramatic like _I’d rather die of hypothermia than ride home with you right now,_ but the words die on her lips because although she hates to admit it, she is indeed really fucking cold. Mustering as much dignity as possible, she climbs into the Jeep and slams the door shut behind her. 

Gideon gets in on the other side and cranks the heat up as high as possible, then backs out of the parking space. There’s a scrape of metal as the side of the Jeep collides with the car next to them; Gideon rolls down the window and sticks her head out to assess the damage. 

“Not bad,” she reports brightly. “You can barely even see it.” 

Harrow just slouches down in her seat - which results in her almost getting strangled to death, because the seatbelts in this car are worse than hangman’s nooses - and closes her eyes tightly. 

//

“We’re here,” Gideon says fifteen minutes later. Her voice jolts Harrow out of the dazed stupor she’d sunk into during the drive, in which she’d been peacefully dreaming of a life that was free of all the annoyances and confusions caused by the existence of Gideon Nav. Harrow blinks and opens her eyes to find that they’re parked in front of her apartment building, and Gideon is still unfortunately existent. In fact, she’s leaning forward in her seat until she’s uncomfortably close to Harrow. 

“What are you doing?” Harrow says suspiciously, inwardly panicking at the way that Gideon’s eyes are studying her intensely. “Get away from me.” 

“You’ve got a little…” Gideon motions at the side of her mouth, and Harrow flushes deeply, scrubbing at the edge of her lips with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. 

“There,” Harrow says shortly. “You can back off now.” 

But Gideon doesn’t; she stays where she is, staring at Harrow like a painting in a museum until Harrow puts her hand out and shoves Gideon’s face away manually. 

“ _Enough_ , Nav,” she says, stabbing at the buckle of her seatbelt. It doesn’t budge. “Help me get this off, will you?” 

“That’s what she said.” 

Harrow briefly toys with the idea of grabbing the hardback copy of lewd lesbian literature off the dashboard and hitting Gideon in the head with it. “Just unclip the seatbelt, moron.” 

“Your wish is my command,” Gideon says dramatically, undoing the seatbelt. Harrow slides free from the seat and opens the door. 

“Hey,” Gideon says from behind her. “Harrow.” 

“What?” 

“Is this the point where you ask me to come inside for a drink but then we just hook up instead?” 

Harrow throws her a look dripping in disgusted skepticism, and Gideon holds up her hands defensively. “Hey, there’s a reason that’s a plot point in most shitty rom coms.” 

“I don’t watch _rom coms_ ,” Harrow answers, lacing the words with the contempt that they deserve. 

“What’s wrong with you? Rom coms are great. You just have to watch them ironically. And avoid the straight ones.” Gideon reaches into the backseat, digging through a mess of magazines and plastic DVD cases. “I think I have _How To Lose A Girl In 10 Days_ somewhere back here, actually...” 

“Forget the stupid movie,” Harrow says, blowing out an exasperated breath. “But - ” She takes a moment to second-third-and-fourth guess what she’s about to say. “You can come inside. If you want.” The words come out in a stumbling rush that leaves Harrow breathless and worried, trembling on the edge of something she can’t yet admit to herself.

Gideon whips around to face her, grinning broadly. “Forget what I said earlier, _that’s_ what she - ” 

“Oh, forget it.” Harrow snaps, deeply regretting every decision she’s ever made in her life that’s led her to this point. She gets out of the car, pointedly not shutting the door all the way just so Gideon will have to shut it properly herself.

She’s at the door of the building, her frozen fingers fumbling with her keys, when Gideon appears next to her, leaning carelessly against the doorframe. 

“You know,” Gideon says conversationally, “for someone who invited me in literally two minutes ago, you sure are giving me mixed messages here.” She peers in the small windows lining the edge of the door. “Why are we just standing out here in the cold?”

“I can’t get it in,” Harrow says, jabbing her key in the lock frustratedly, and then, glaring at Gideon: “Don’t you _dare_ say it.”

“Jeez, lighten up,” Gideon mumbles. “It’s like your sense of humor was surgically removed as a child.” 

Harrow finally forces the door open, almost falling forward into the dimly lit hallway. Gideon walks alongside her, disconcertingly quiet for once. 

“Here,” Harrow says as they come to a stop at the door of her apartment. She unlocks it, letting Gideon into the front hall as she flicks on the light. “But take your shoes off. I don’t want your ugly shit-stomping sneakers all over my floor.” 

“Hey, _rude_ ,” Gideon says, tugging her shoes off and setting them down by the door. “Chuck Taylors are classic. I can’t believe a girl who wears Doc Martens is about to preach to me about acceptable footwear.” She wanders down the hall into the kitchen like she’s perfectly at home here, and Harrow is left with no choice but to follow. 

“This way,” she says, shoving Gideon in the direction of her bedroom in an attempt to reassert control of the situation. 

Her room is dark, the only light coming from the weak lamp resting on her bedside table. Gideon reaches for the light switch, but Harrow stops her; there’s something so unbearable about the thought of Gideon seeing her properly right now. She watches uncomfortably as Gideon walks around the room.

“Are these skull-shaped pot plants?” Gideon asks. “And a poster of a skeleton on the wall? And a plain black comforter? Where did you go shopping for room decor, a morgue?”

“There’s nothing wrong with my room,” Harrow says defiantly. “The black color scheme is good for concentration. It’s therapeutic.”

“Morbid interior design is not therapy. Get help.” Gideon crosses the room to Harrow’s bed and sits down on the edge, bouncing up and down slightly. “Oh good, there’s a decent mattress at least. I’d kinda started thinking that maybe you slept in a coffin or something, to really complete your whole dark gothy theme.” 

Harrow walks over to her and puts a hand on her back, intending to push her off the bed or maybe out the window; Gideon turns and catches her perfectly, pressing her lips to Harrow’s in a searing kiss. Her tongue sweeps over Harrow’s bottom lip, slides into her mouth, and Harrow’s eyes flutter closed despite herself. 

Gideon lies them down on the bed, propping herself up on her elbows and leaning down to kiss Harrow again. It’s good, so good that Harrow wants to lie back and let it happen, but she forces herself to stop. They’re in her house, her bed; this is her home turf. Like hell she’s going to let Gideon run the show here. 

“Get up,” Harrow says, breaking the kiss and pushing at Gideon’s chest. Gideon moves off her immediately, and Harrow takes the opportunity to roll on top of her.

“Oh,” Gideon says. “Okay. I can get behind this.” 

Harrow tugs at the edge of Gideon’s shirt, pulling it up and freezing at the sight of Gideon’s exposed stomach. Her skin is golden brown, beautifully smooth, and there’s a dusting of red hair trailing its way down into the top of her jeans. Harrow’s eyes catch there, lingering despite herself. 

Gideon shrugs away from her for a moment, pulling the shirt over her head and tossing it to the floor. Her sports bra follows, and then she’s completely bare from the waist up. Harrow lets out an embarrassingly shaky breath at the sight. 

“These too,” she says, her fingers feeling for the button of Gideon’s jeans. “Take them off.” 

“Bossy,” Gideon says, pulling her jeans off. “I like it.” She tosses them to the side, then slips her fingers under the edge of Harrow’s shirt. Harrow tenses. 

“Griddle...” 

“Hey, it’s only fair,” Gideon says, but her hand stills on Harrow’s waist. “Do you want me to stop? You don’t have to - ” 

Harrow breathes in, breathes out. She looks down at Gideon’s face, concerned despite her obvious arousal, and nods. “It’s fine.” 

Gideon helps Harrow out of her shirt, dropping it over the side of the bed, and then unbuttons her pants and watches while Harrow works them down her legs and discards them along with the shirt. Harrow shivers a little, feeling exposed, and pushes Gideon back against the bed to regain control. 

“Stay _still_ ,” she says impatiently, biting at Gideon’s neck before moving to her chest. She closes her mouth around one of Gideon’s nipples, scraping gently with her teeth, and Gideon arches upwards into the touch with a breathy moan. 

Harrow works her way down Gideon’s body, leaving open-mouthed kisses against her stomach and pointedly ignoring the way that Gideon’s oblique muscles flex under her touch. She reaches the edge of Gideon’s underwear and presses a kiss against the wet fabric. 

“Harrow,” Gideon says, sliding a hand to the back of Harrow’s head and twisting her fingers gently into her hair, “stop teasing.” 

Harrow slowly pulls Gideon’s underwear down her legs, then bites at her hipbone just to be mean. Gideon lets out a whine, pulling at Harrow’s hair, and Harrow finds it alarmingly hot; she presses her thighs together, seeking the relief of friction. She’s wet and aching already, and she knows it, but she pushes it to the side. Gideon is her focus right now. 

Gideon is absolutely soaked, wetness smeared across the insides of her thighs and the orange curls between her legs. Harrow blows a teasing breath across her clit and is rewarded with another tug at her hair. 

“If this is payback for all the times I’ve teased you, I’m sorry already,” Gideon groans. “I’m _sorry_ , okay, can you just - ” The rest of her sentence dies on her lips as Harrow leans forward and puts her mouth on her. 

Harrow swipes her tongue over Gideon, moving in flat circles across her clit. Gideon moans, her thighs pushing closer around Harrow’s ears as her head falls back against the pillows. She’s sweet on Harrow’s tongue, sweet with a hint of salty bitterness; when Harrow licks into her, Gideon lets out a whispered _“fuck”_ that’s as reverent as it is desperate. 

Harrow slips two fingers into Gideon, spreading them slowly, and Gideon’s hips jerk upwards. “Fuck, I’m close...don’t stop...” 

“Now who’s easy?” Harrow asks triumphantly.

“You’re such a bitch,” Gideon says breathlessly. “Do you even know how to make a girl come, or - ” 

Harrow puts her mouth back on Gideon and seals her lips around her clit, sucking hard as she curls her fingers inside her again. Gideon’s body tenses, and then she's coming hard with a drawn-out gasp. 

“Okay,” she says after a moment, gazing up at Harrow with unfocused eyes. “I take it back. You do know what you’re doing.” 

“Obviously,” Harrow snipes. She shifts around on the bed, uncomfortably turned on. Now that Gideon is clearly done for the night, Harrow really just wants her to leave so she can take care of herself in private. 

She goes to wipe her hand on the bedspread, but Gideon reaches out and catches it. She presses a kiss to Harrow’s palm and then takes Harrow’s fingers into her mouth, making direct eye contact as she licks them clean. Harrow inhales sharply, the sight sending a jolt of arousal tearing through her stomach. 

Gideon lets go of Harrow’s hand and slides down until she’s lying completely flat on the bed. “You don’t think we’re done, do you? Come over here.” 

“What - ” 

“I want you to sit on my face,” Gideon says.

Harrow clenches involuntarily, feels an answering gush of wetness between her legs. She scrambles madly for a scrap of denial, a semblance of dignity. “I’m _not_ sitting on your face.” 

“Sure you are,” Gideon says, wrapping her fingers around Harrow’s and tugging her closer. “Saddle up, sunshine.” 

Harrow allows Gideon to pull her into position until she’s straddling Gideon’s face, poised above her mouth. 

“This is stupid,” she mutters, knowing that her protests don’t sound very convincing when she’s so wet she’s literally dripping. 

Gideon just winks up at her, then braces her hands against Harrow’s thighs and licks into her. All of Harrow’s reluctance flies out the window as she grabs for the headboard to keep from falling over. 

//

Later that night, Gideon collects her clothes from where they’re scattered around the room and starts getting dressed again. Harrow stays where she is on the bed, pulling a blanket over herself. 

“This was fun,” Gideon says. “Let’s do it again.” 

Harrow grimaces at her. “Nav, stop. You make it sound like this was a barbecue with the neighbors or something.” 

“What’s wrong with that?” Gideon pulls her shirt over her head, and Harrow’s eyes stray to the flex of her arms. “Barbecue is great. That’s what I did last year for my birthday, actually. Pretty much the whole neighborhood showed up.” 

“Birthday celebrations are stupid,” Harrow retorts, pulling her blanket tighter around her.

Gideon’s eyebrows rise. “How can you be against birthday celebrations? Were you born on Christmas or something? Too many nativity themed parties?” 

“No,” Harrow says. “My birthday’s next Saturday, actually. I just don’t celebrate.” 

“You don’t _celebrate_?” Gideon’s expression borders on incredulous. “What the hell is wrong with you?” 

Harrow blinks against memories of her childhood, thinking of the cold rooms of her house and the stern glares of her parents and the holidays that never got any more recognition than a brief verbal mention on the days in question. “Nothing’s wrong with me, Griddle. Birthdays are just stupid.” She pushes her face against the pillow, wishing she hadn’t said anything. “Shouldn’t you be leaving now?” 

“Got it,” Gideon says, standing up from the bed. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” She points finger guns at Harrow, flashing her a bright smile, and then disappears. A minute later, Harrow hears the front door open and then close again. 

Harrow pulls the blankets over her head, feeling an unwelcome smile pushing its way across the corner of her mouth in return.

//

Gideon doesn’t mention the birthday thing again, and by the time Harrow’s birthday rolls around the next weekend, she’s put the conversation out of her mind completely. She has the day off from work, and she’s planning to spend it doing pretty much nothing. 

She’s in the third stage of Doing Nothing, otherwise known as lying on the couch and listlessly staring into space thinking about how much she hates birthdays while a vapid sitcom that she doesn’t have the energy to click away from flashes across the television screen, when her phone screen lights up. Harrow reaches for the device, squinting against the brightness; evening has fallen while she’s been lazing around. There’s a text from Camilla. 

**Camilla Hect**

_hey nonagesimus. come over to our apartment, there’s something i need to give you._

Harrow is momentarily confused about this - they can’t have gotten her a present or anything, she’s purposefully ignored the fill-in-your-birthdays calendar hanging on the wall of the Locked Tomb for the last two years - and then she remembers the paycheck that Camilla still owes her and figures that’s the end of the mystery. 

She’s half tempted to put this off till tomorrow, but there’s currently nothing in her fridge but dark roast coffee packets and leftover soup and she really needs money to go grocery shopping, so she reluctantly gets up and drives over to the tree-lined street of brownstone apartments where Camilla and Palamedes live.

When Harrow steps into the hallway where Camilla’s apartment is, she hears a loud burst of noise coming from behind the door. Frowning to herself, she knocks sharply. 

The noise immediately ceases, and it seems like an eternity before the door opens. Camilla appears in the doorway, staring at her with an inscrutable expression. 

“Hect,” Harrow says, feeling extremely awkward. “You wanted me to come over, right?” 

“Yeah,” Camilla says, glancing over her shoulder quickly. “Okay, come on in.” 

She swings the door wider open. Harrow steps inside, looking around at the pale grey walls covered in maps (Palamedes) and a perfectly arranged rainbow of color test strips from the paint store (Camilla). The kitchen table, usually kept meticulously clean, has a pile of brightly colored paper plates and a motley collection of alcohol bottles scattered across it, and there are black streamers hanging from the ceiling for some unfathomable reason. 

“Is this about my paycheck?” Harrow asks. “Because you’ve owed me that for over three weeks now.” 

“Check over there,” Camilla says, waving in the direction of the living room coffee table. “I think Pal left it somewhere in that pile of stuff.” 

Harrow walks over to the table, but she’s barely started sifting through the stack of papers there when a familiar voice yells “SURPRISE!” and Gideon jumps out from behind the sofa, a cone-shaped blue party hat sitting at a rakish angle on her head. 

Harrow automatically takes a step back, her heart doing some kind of rapid-fire explosion in her chest that she tells herself is due to shock and _nothing_ else. “Nav, what the hell - ” 

“Come on, guys,” Gideon says, seemingly addressing the empty air behind the couch. “I said jump out on three! You left me hanging.” 

Harrow stares as Corona, Ianthe, Naberius, Palamedes, Isaac, Jeannemary, Dulcinea, Magnus, and Abigail appear from behind the couch, all of them but Ianthe wearing cheap party hats. 

“Was it _on_ three?” Isaac asks. “I thought it was after three.” 

“She clearly said _on_ ,” Jeannemary says, straightening his hat. “Honestly, maybe we should’ve gotten your ears checked that one time.” 

“What is going on here?” Harrow asks. Jeannemary seems to be leaning towards her as if unsure whether or not to try for some form of physical contact, and Harrow takes a large step backwards to discourage that impulse. 

“Party time!” Gideon says, grinning. “I figured you wouldn’t have plans today, because you told me you never celebrated your birthday - ” 

“For good reason, birthday celebrations are an idiotic waste of time - ” 

“ - and that’s the saddest fucking thing I’ve ever heard, so I texted everyone and organized a little party here.” Gideon points towards the ceiling. “Look, I even got some goth-ass decorations to suit your shitty little emo heart. Do you want a party hat?” 

“I would rather rip my own head off than put a party hat on it,” Harrow replies. 

“Okay then, no hat,” Gideon decides. “Here, you can wear my sunglasses instead.” She pulls her god-awful aviators out of her pocket, carefully sliding them onto the top of Harrow’s head and tucking the hooks behind her ears. Harrow leans slightly into the touch and then immediately jerks away when she realizes what she’s doing. 

“I got a cake,” Gideon continues, “and I tried to get balloons, but the store didn’t have any black ones. And I tried to do a little improv decoration with the glitter, but that turned out...interesting. But hey, it’s the thought that counts, right?” 

Harrow stares at her, then at the decorations, then at the others in the room. It’s stupid and childish and excessively glittery, but it’s also the first time in twenty-three years that someone has bothered to give her anything more than a curt “Happy birthday, Harrowhark” on her birthday, and Gideon looks so hopeful as she awaits Harrow’s reaction. Against her will, Harrow finds herself smiling. It’s a barely-there quirk at the corner of her mouth, but Gideon must notice, because she smiles back. 

“You’re an idiot,” Harrow says, "and that hat looks stupid on you."

“So you like it?” Gideon asks.

“It’s not horrible.” 

“Hold that thought,” Gideon says, taking two steps over to the living room stereo and fiddling with the dial. A second later, an early 2000s pop punk song comes pouring loudly out of the speakers. 

“She made you a playlist,” Camilla explains. “Ransacked our music library for, as she put it, ‘fake emo songs that they’d play at Hot Topic.’” 

“Seemed like your kind of jam,” Gideon says. “Okay, now let’s get drunk!” 

//

Harrow had never thought she’d spend her twenty-third birthday punch-drunk and playing Monopoly with Abigail Pent, Ianthe Tridentarius, and Palamedes Sextus, but that’s exactly what she ends up doing two hours into the party. It’s just the four of them left standing; Gideon had gone bankrupt one round in, Isaac and Jeannemary had lost all their properties and quit playing in favor of throwing the plastic hotels at each other, and Corona and Camilla had migrated over to the kitchen table, where they appeared to be having a discussion with Magnus and Dulcinea about the plot of some show they’d all watched. Naberius is standing next to Corona, refilling her glass every few minutes. 

Ianthe is currently winning, but Abigail is holding her own. Palamedes, despite being the banker, is two hundred dollars from bankruptcy. And Harrow...Harrow is having issues with fully concentrating on the game at hand. 

“Buy Park Place,” Gideon says in her ear, leaning over and dropping her head to rest on Harrow’s shoulder. Her hair tickles Harrow’s neck, and Harrow pushes her away. 

“I’m not going to buy Park Place. No one ever lands there.” 

“Palamedes just did, like...two rounds ago.” 

Harrow leans back against Gideon, just slightly, alarmed at how natural it feels. “I’m not buying it.” 

“You suck at game strategy,” Gideon says. Harrow turns enough to catch the smile at the corner of Gideon’s mouth, which is soft enough that she obviously thinks Harrow can’t see it. “You’d definitely get yourself stuck in prison for three years, or whatever happens in that one strategy problem.” 

“The prisoner’s dilemma,” says Palamedes, straightening his pile of twenty dollar bills, “is a form of paradoxical decision analysis that deals with a particular subset of game theory…” 

“Thanks, Pal,” Gideon says. “Really don’t care about the details. The point is that Harrow would suck at it.” 

Harrow rolls her eyes, then rolls the dice, which lands her on Baltic Avenue and about fifteen of Ianthe’s hotels. “Fuck.” 

Ianthe’s pale violet eyes gleam with a triumphant glee. “That’s $4, 095 in rent. Pay up, Harry.” 

Gideon pokes Harrow lightly in the side, lowering her voice to what passes for a whisper in Gideon Nav’s world and a quiet shout in anyone else’s. “If you pay her, will you go bankrupt?” 

Harrow does a quick mental count. “Yes. Why?” 

“Alright, then,” Gideon says, getting to her feet. “Forget Monopoly. Who wants cake?” 

Isaac and Jeannemary immediately leave off injuring each other with small chunks of plastic and jump up. “Yeah, let’s have cake!” 

Ianthe raises an eyebrow, her expression supremely unconcerned but irritated around the edges. Her lips part, probably to deliver some scathing remark, but Gideon is already shepherding people over to the kitchen table. Harrow takes a seat at one of the bar-style stools, watching with unfounded apprehension as Camilla and Gideon open the fridge and manhandle a large platter out of it. Camilla gives Palamedes a nod, and suddenly there’s a pair of hands over Harrow’s eyes, gently obstructing her vision. 

“Sorry about this,” Palamedes says quietly to her. “It’s just for the candle lighting. I don’t think it’s necessary, but Cam - ” 

“ - knows that it’s part of tradition,” Camilla says, finishing the sentence for him. “And it is.” 

There’s the sound of a lighter clicking and a muffled curse from Gideon, and then Palamedes removes his hands, allowing Harrow to see the cake. It’s large and rectangular, with twenty-three lit candles on it - wildly unorganized on one side and perfectly spaced on the other, which confirms that Gideon and Camilla were the ones to set them up - and an untidy icing scrawl across the top reads HAPPY BIRTHDAY HARROW, half of the W disapppearing off the edge of the cake. 

“Oh, yeah,” Gideon says, noticing the surreptitious glance that Harrow gives the side of the cake in search of the rest of the W. “The bakery was going to charge mad money to add the customization, so I figured I’d just try doing it myself. It was kind of hard, but whatever. At least it’s readable.” 

“A bit charitable of you to call that readable,” Ianthe murmurs from where she’s sitting.

“Are we going to sing?” Isaac asks, leaning so far forward that he almost falls into the cake. Jeannemary grabs his shirt and pulls him back.

“No,” Harrow says quickly. “Do _not_ sing.” She can think of nothing worse than a group of musically untalented people wishing her a happy birthday by way of off-key singing. 

“Make a wish, then,” Jeannemary says, her eyes full of a bright, enthusiastic happiness that freshman year at college has somehow failed to destroy yet. 

Harrow doesn’t believe in luck or wishes, but she takes a deep breath and blows out the candles anyway. In the split second before the flames go out, her eyes find Gideon’s.

“Enough with the ceremony,” Ianthe drawls. “Slice it up already.” 

Camilla crosses the kitchen to the decorative knife rack next to the sink and takes down a large black knife. Harrow accepts it dubiously, weighing it in her hand and wondering why it seems to be at least five pounds. She sticks it in the cake, slices right through the A in her name, spectacularly fails at making a clean cut, and ends up smudging icing across the top of the cake. 

“Okay, stop,” Gideon says. “This is just pathetic. I can’t watch. Do you want help?”

“No,” Harrow huffs, yanking on the knife. It just smears the icing more. “I’ve got this.” 

“No you don’t,” Gideon says. “Let me do it, okay? This is like a hate crime against cake. A cake crime.” She holds her hand out to Harrow, palm up. A request, not a demand. “Allow me. While you were busy being emo, I studied the blade.” 

Harrow offers her the knife handle-first, and it feels like a confession; she watches Gideon cut through the cake quickly and effortlessly, carefully keeping the letters of Harrow’s name intact, and it feels like a response. She locks that away in a corner of her mind - she can’t think about that now, or ever.

Gideon passes out plates of cake. Jeannemary and Isaac attack their slices like wolves, apparently having an eating contest, and then start fencing with their plastic forks; Ianthe serves herself a plate with nothing but white frosting on it. Magnus and Abigail take one plate to share, and Harrow’s gaze lingers on them for a moment, watching as they carefully dig at their slice from both sides. There’s an unmissable affection in the gesture, and rather than disgusting her like public displays of affection usually do, it makes her chest ache in a way that’s not painful but not familiar either. 

Gideon slides a plate in front of her, and Harrow raises an eyebrow. The slice of cake on the plate is at least three times larger than anyone else’s. “I can’t eat all of this.” 

“Your loss,” Gideon says. And then, picking up her fork: “Wanna share, then?” 

Harrow’s first instinct is to snatch back the plate and walk to the other side of the kitchen. She can’t share a plate with Gideon - not after watching Magnus and Abigail, not after noting the intricate intimacy of that ritual. 

Gideon smiles at her crookedly, and something in Harrow gives up the ghost.

“Fine,” she says, tipping the plate towards Gideon. “But only because you cut a piece that was much too large. Honestly, Griddle, this slice is almost half the cake.” 

“Thanks,” Gideon says, a flash of sincerity crossing her face for a moment before it’s covered with her normal grin. “I’m eating the half with more frosting.” 

She digs her fork into the side of the cake, carving out a large bite. Magnus, glancing over at them, smiles at Harrow in a way that feels distinctly of paternal approval, and Harrow manages to give him a vague smile in return. 

The party stretches out, settles idly throughout the apartment; people spread out on the floor, on the couch, on the grey reclining armchairs. The mood turns lazy and comfortable. Palamedes drifts over to the stereo and switches the music from All Time Low to Bon Iver. 

And Harrow, sitting on the sofa between Magnus and Gideon, finds herself feeling more at home than she has in a long time. 

“Here,” Jeannemary says from where she’s sitting on the floor, pushing a badly wrapped package across the table to her. “It’s me and Isaac’s present.” Then, as an aside to Isaac: “I _know_ I didn’t wrap it well. You can do it next time.” 

“Oh, is it present-opening time?” Ianthe asks, producing a large box out of thin air. “Here you go, Harry.” 

The others gather around the coffee table, and a pile of presents starts rapidly growing in front of Harrow. She unwraps them as quickly as possible, feeling the specific kind of embarrassment that can only be experienced when one is being given too many gifts of which they do not feel deserving. 

Jeannemary and Isaac’s gift is two coffee mugs, mysteriously bearing the words ONE FLESH and ONE END. Magnus and Abigail’s gift is a stack of books: an eclectic mix of classic myths, British mystery novels, and one cyberpunk lesbian novel, all clearly used but kept in lovingly near-perfect condition. Corona gives her a makeup kit from Sephora, from which Harrow decides to use the black eyeliner and absolutely nothing else; Naberius gives her nothing, but his signature is on the card that goes with the kit. Dulcinea gives her a set of black lace handkerchiefs which are surprisingly nice, and Harrow grudgingly concedes that maybe she should be nicer to her in the future. Camilla gives her socks, which Harrow can only assume is for Camilla’s own amusement, and a bottle of vodka; Palamedes gives her a book that he knows she’s been wanting for a while. Ianthe gives her a box that has another box inside of it and another box inside of _that_ , and after almost ten minutes of unpacking a Russian nesting doll of boxes and wrestling with an obscene amount of tape, Harrow unearths a final box with a crumpled hundred dollar bill sitting at the bottom. 

And then Gideon is handing her a large package wrapped in black paper. “Saved the best for last.” 

Harrow unwraps it carefully to find a black bundle of clothing inside. Unfolding the clothing, she frowns at it. 

She’d assumed it was a sweatshirt. It was not a sweatshirt. 

“Nav,” she says flatly. “What is this?” 

“Skeleton onesie,” Gideon explains cheerfully. “It should fit. I picked the scrawniest size available.” 

Harrow raises an eyebrow at the garment in question. It’s got cartoon-y white bones all over it in the approximation of a skeleton, although not in great detail: it’s missing the clavicular notch, and some of the lumbar vertebrae are placed out of true. “I’m not wearing this.” 

“You say that now,” Gideon says, “but just wait until the next time you get cold.” 

“I’m not wearing this, _ever_.” 

Now that the present-unwrapping, everyone spreads out around the living room again. Camilla opens the slider door and steps out onto the balcony, and after a short pause, Corona follows her.

Gideon puts her feet up on the table, snatching the last bite of cake from Harrow’s fork. “I’m telling you, as soon as the temperature drops you’ll be wearing it. Nothing like _ye olde skeleton onesie_ to keep yourself warm at this time of the year.” 

Harrow’s about to reply when Gideon sits up bolt upright, leaning forward and peering through the glass door to the balcony. Harrow looks over to see that Camilla and Corona are leaning back against the railing, Corona's arms draped over Camilla's shoulders, and they’re kissing enthusiastically. 

“Hell yeah!” Gideon exclaims. “That’s what I’m talking about. Pay up, Pal.” 

Harrow stares as Palamedes digs out his wallet with a sigh, handing Gideon a crisp twenty dollar bill. “I can’t believe she couldn’t hold out one more day,” he sighs. “Well, actually, knowing Cam...yes, I can believe it.” 

“You bet on when they’d get together?” Jeannemary asks, looking impressed. 

“Of course,” Gideon says, tapping the bill against her palm. “Rule number one about having friends who are obviously into each other: if you don't bet on their love life, you’re doing it wrong.” 

//

It’s almost midnight when the party finally ends, and Harrow is one of the last to leave. She’s gathering up her presents while Camilla and Corona start cleaning up in the kitchen (usually Palamedes’ job, but he’s fallen asleep in an armchair) when Gideon clears her throat and hands her another package. It’s much smaller than the first. 

“What is this?” Harrow asks suspiciously, accepting it nevertheless. “You already got me a present.” 

“I know,” Gideon says, one hand rubbing at the back of her head awkwardly. “But I wanted to get you something else. So, yeah. Here. It’s kinda dumb, just something I saw and thought you might like, and uh, yeah. I’m leaving now.” She walks towards the door, then abruptly turns around and heads right for Harrow. Before Harrow can do anything to react, Gideon’s reaching out and pulling her into a hug, lifting her fully off the ground. 

Harrow doesn’t hug back. She’s almost paralyzed with shock. Gideon’s arms are strong and warm around her, and she hates how much she loves it, hates that it feels safe, hates that she could honestly stay here for the rest of the night. 

Gideon sets her down again and says “Happy birthday, my twilit princess,” and then she’s gone. Harrow remains frozen to the spot, staring at the door long after it’s closed behind her.

“Nonagesimus,” Camilla calls from the kitchen. “You good?” 

“Yes,” Harrow calls back. “Fine.” She says her goodbyes and leaves before Camilla can question her any further.

When she gets home, Harrow opens Gideon’s second present and finds a stack of five small, beautifully decorated posters. Four of them have various bone-related designs on them, skeletons mixing with shadows and chapels and leafless trees. Harrow loves them immensely, but she keeps coming back to the fifth card for some reason. It’s the most detailed of the set, showing two people reaching out to touch hands. The taller person has a sword in their free hand, the blade resting on their shoulder; the shorter person has a handful of fingerbones levitating above the palm of their hand. If Harrow squints hard enough, she can see that the taller person has orange hair.

Harrow sticks the posters on the wall by her desk and gets into bed, smiling to herself slightly as the best birthday she’s ever had slowly comes to a close. Right before she slips away into sleep, her last thought is of red hair and hands on a sword hilt. 

//

The next time that they hook up, a week after the impromptu birthday party, it’s at Gideon’s apartment. Despite Harrow’s previous mental resolution to steer clear of whatever den of iniquity in which she’s sure that Gideon lives, she’s relieved - and surprised - to find that it’s not as bad as she’d thought. It’s fairly neat, it’s got proper dishes in the kitchen cupboards, and the walls are painted a respectable pale blue; knowing Gideon’s (horrible, nonexistent) eye for color, Harrow had half-expected them to be painted bright orange or neon green.

Then again, she isn’t really paying much attention to the interior decor. 

“Fuck,” she groans, her back arching against Gideon’s mattress. Gideon looks up from between her legs long enough to give her a little smirk before diving back in. Harrow’s head falls back against the pillows, hearing the headboard smack against the wall as she does.

Gideon slips two fingers into her without warning, setting a steady rhythm but not going deep enough to do much more than tease. Harrow knows she knows this, knows she’s waiting for Harrow to say something about it, and normally Harrow wouldn’t give in like this, but she’s too far gone to really care at this point.

“Stop teasing and fuck me properly,” she gasps out, lifting her hips to chase Gideon’s touch, to piush her fingers deeper. Then, in a lapse of judgement that she would never have experienced under normal circumstances: “Please.” 

Gideon freezes for a moment, and Harrow swears she can hear the distinct sound of her brain rebooting. “What?” 

“Please,” Harrow repeats, no longer caring that she’s humiliating herself more with every repetition of the word. “ _Please_.” 

“Yeah,” Gideon says, her voice full of something that Harrow can’t quite identify. “Okay.” 

It’s all a blur after that - Gideon’s mouth, pressed to her clit; Gideon’s fingers, dragging inside of her; Gideon, Gideon, Gideon. Harrow loses track of how many times she comes. Eventually she’s forced to tap out, tangling one hand in Gideon’s hair and pulling until Gideon gets the message. 

“Enough,” she says, her voice rasping alarmingly. “I don’t require any more...enough.” 

Gideon wipes her mouth on the back of her hand and moves up the bed until she’s next to Harrow, looking down at her with a fond smirk. “Had to tap out already?” 

“For your information,” Harrow begins, and then stops, because anything she says from here on will just serve to feed Gideon’s ego. “I’m just...tired.” 

“Okay,” Gideon says, flopping down on her back now and closing her eyes. Harrow sneaks a look at her, taking everything in: the strong line of her jaw, the curve of her nose, the small spikes forming in her damp orange hair. She’s so solid, so perfect, and Harrow feels somewhat sick at the sight. The question rises up in her throat before she can choke it down.

“Why do you even like me?” 

Gideon opens her eyes. “What?” 

“I mean...” Harrow trails off, unsure of what she wants to say but sure that it needs to be said. There’s a sick feeling twisting her stomach into shreds, an undeniable sense of guilt and fear crushing against her lungs. She doesn’t know why, but it feels fundamentally important for her to ruin the moment. “I mean, I don’t know why you like me. I’m nothing like the women you like.” 

Gideon props herself up on one elbow, facing her, and Harrow instinctively pulls the sheet up to cover herself. “What do you mean, the women I like?” 

“You know, the ones in your disgusting magazines.” Harrow takes a breath, wondering why her ribs hurt all of a sudden. “I don’t know why you’d want to look at me when they’re what you’re used to seeing.”

“I look at you,” Gideon says teasingly, “and I would rather look at you than all the porn mags in the world.” Then, noticing the look on Harrow’s face: “Harrow, seriously. Those magazines are shit, we both know that. It’s only the articles that make them good. Those women aren’t even my type. Okay, they’re one of my types, but you’re also my type.” 

“And I’m not - I’m not nice, or sweet, or even good most of the time,” Harrow continues, only half-hearing what Gideon’s saying. “Not like Dulcinea. I know you like her, so - ” 

“I don’t?” Gideon says, more of a question than a statement. “We're nice to each other because we're _friends_. She’s actually into Palamedes.” 

“Oh,” Harrow says, wishing herself a million miles away right now. She strongly regrets bringing this up at all. She reaches for her shirt, pulling it on in a way that keeps her covered by the sheet. It may be stupid, considering that Gideon has seen her naked over a dozen times by now, but she can’t bear the thought of being seen right now. 

“Hey,” Gideon says, her voice softer than Harrow’s ever heard it. “Don’t worry.” 

“I’m not,” Harrow lies.

“I’m right here,” Gideon says, leaning over and pressing a quick kiss to her forehead. Harrow’s heart stutters twice, then stops altogether. “Whatever this is, I’m not going anywhere, okay? I’ll be here as long as you want me. Someone has to stick with your gothy little ass.” 

Harrow feels like she’s sinking into the bed. Gideon looks concerned, and Harrow just feels even guiltier because of it. 

_I don’t know what I want,_ she wants to say, and then: _No, I know what I want. I just don’t think I’m allowed to have it._

“Harrow,” Gideon says, eyebrows knit in concern, and Harrow lets herself breathe again.

“Okay,” she manages, and it’s like speaking from the bottom of the ocean.

“Alright,” Gideon says, sounding vastly relieved. “Good.” She lies down flat again and Harrow lies with her, the two of them submerged in silence. 

Harrow doesn’t know how much time passes, but eventually she feels exhaustion creeping into her bones. She looks over and sees that Gideon’s eyes are fluttering shut, and takes this as her cue to exit. She reaches over the side of the bed, searching for the rest of her clothes.

“You don’t have to leave, you know,” Gideon says, her voice heavy with tiredness. “You can sleep here.” 

If it were not already one in the morning; if Gideon’s bed were not so comfortable; if Gideon didn’t look so soft and safe in the dim light of her bedroom, Harrow would have gotten up and left as usual. But she’s so tired, and Gideon is already half asleep, and there’s nowhere in the world that Harrow would rather be right now, even if she’s loathe to admit it. 

Instead of leaving, she shifts closer to Gideon and closes her eyes.

//

It’s only the morning after that, having woken up and found herself still in Gideon’s bed, Harrow realizes she’s made a mistake. 

Gideon’s still asleep, her eyes tightly closed and her breaths coming quietly. She’s got one arm draped over Harrow’s waist, gently holding her close, their legs tangled and bodies pressed together. 

Harrow looks down at the position they’re in, and she doesn’t hate it. She’s horrified by just how _much_ she doesn’t hate it.

She’d be perfectly happy to wake up like this again, and again after that, and the thought is terrifying. 

Gideon stirs slightly, but doesn’t wake. The early morning sunlight pours in through the window, painting her in a wash of gold as Harrow watches, and Harrow can’t take this anymore. She really and truly can’t take it. 

She wants - she wants so _badly_ , and the sheer enormity of her desire sickens her. This isn’t how things are supposed to go. 

She slips out from under Gideon’s arm, gets dressed, and leaves.

//

She doesn’t see Gideon for over a week. 

Harrow isn’t sure how it happens, exactly. All she knows is that Gideon doesn’t talk to her, or she doesn’t talk to Gideon, and their shifts somehow never overlap. She ends up working five nights in a row with Naberius, which is its own circle of hell. She thinks - vaguely, fleetingly - of texting Gideon only to realize that they don’t even have each other’s numbers, which is both a surprising and depressing realization, although not as surprising and depressing as this: the fact that she misses Gideon.

No matter how much Harrow wants to pretends otherwise, there’s no getting around it - she misses Gideon, wholly and unrelentingly. Without even realizing it, her life had intertwined with Gideon’s, overlapping at every edge and locking into place like bone joints. She doesn’t know what to do with herself now that she’s alone.

On Friday night, plagued with a combination of melancholy loneliness and unadulterated dread at the prospect of working another shift with Naberius, Harrow calls in sick. 

She thinks she almost hears a hint of pity in Camilla’s voice as the manager says “Okay, I’ll get Corona to cover you,” and it makes her feel even worse. Hanging up without another word, she flops down onto the couch to wallow in pity and loathing, both directed at herself. 

_I’m not going anywhere,_ Gideon had said, and at the time, Harrow had been sure she meant it. Now, lying face down with her head half buried in couch cushions, she comes to the conclusion that Gideon had probably just been lying to make her feel better. Gideon _betrayed_ her. 

But wallowing in self pity only goes so far, and eventually Harrow is forced to confront the reality of her situation, which is that lying around moping is doing nothing for her. Also she’s really hungry, so she gets up and starts rummaging around in the refrigerator to see what ingredients she has for soup. 

The answer is absolutely _none_ ; her search turns up nothing but a wilted onion half, a damp sprig of parsley, and a mostly-empty can of tomato sauce. She resigns herself to the Herculean labor of grocery shopping and reluctantly drives to the closest store, which is the shitty little market located in the plaza mall near the lake.

Drearburh Mart is almost empty at this time of night, and Harrow wanders through the aisles in a daze, throwing vegetables into her cart at random and beating down the little voice in her head that says, like a complete asshole, _hey, wouldn’t it be nice to have a tall person along with you to reach the stuff on the top shelves? Hey, isn’t Gideon tall?_

“Shut up,” Harrow says out loud, and swipes a few more bottom-shelf items into her cart. (Bottom-shelf in both the literal and physical sense - she’s pretty sure that there’s mold on one of the potatoes.) 

She’s at the wine section, poking around at the cheap ones on the second rack, when a voice behind her says “Well hello there, Harry. Fancy meeting you here.” 

Ianthe Tridentarius stands behind her, her cart completely empty except for one bag of premade Ore-Ida french fries. She’s dressed like an anemic model straight from the Met Gala runway, all silk and velvet, and there’s a lit cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. She looks absolutely ravishing, and Harrow despises her wholeheartedly.

Harrow’s response is short and to the point. “Go away,” she says, pretending to read the label on a bottle of rosé. 

Ianthe props her elbow up against the handle of her cart. “Really, I’m loving the despondent expression. You look like Eeyore, but with clinical depression.” 

“Eeyore _does_ have clinical depression,” Harrow replies curtly. “That’s literally what he’s a metaphor for.”

“Oh,” Ianthe muses. “Well, that would explain a lot.” 

Harrow detachedly wonders if there’s anything more subliminally ominous than running into Ianthe Tridentarius at the grocery store at 10:20 pm on a Friday night, and decides that there probably isn’t. “What are you even doing here? I thought you ordered all your food from that gourmet catering place in Paris.” 

“Oh, I do,” Ianthe assures her. “In fact, there’s a shipment coming in tomorrow, if I’m not mistaken. I do hope they remembered to put in the chocolate charcuterie board, otherwise I’ll simply have to murder someone.” 

“Right.”

“But I know you shop here,” Ianthe continues, “so I came to find you.”

“Tridentarius,” Harrow says, feeling distinctly unnerved, “what possible reason could you have for tracking me down at Drearburh Mart in the middle of the night?” 

Ianthe takes another lazy drag of her cigarette. “Word on the street is that you and the goblin are on the precipice of self-destruction.” And then, off Harrow’s blank look: “As the common people would say, you and Nav are on the rocks.” 

Harrow’s stomach drops. “Fuck you.” 

“Oh, I’d love that,” Ianthe says languidly. “But I don’t think you’re offering.” 

“I’m not.” 

“A shame,” Ianthe says. “Look, I know you’ll eventually get back together with her; settle down, haunted house, picket fence, happy ever after on the last page. But if you ever want a distraction…” Her mouth crooks upwards at the corner, knife-sharp. “I’ll be here, Harry.” 

“Um, excuse me,” says a tremblingly juvenile voice, and Harrow sends up a mental prayer of thanks that she’s being spared from having to answer Ianthe. A small blonde boy approaches them, wearing a Drearburh Mart employee polo that looks three sizes too big for his scrawny frame. His name tag says _Hi, I’m KYLE_. “Ma’am, uh, you uh, you can’t smoke in here.” 

“Oh, how silly of me to forget,” Ianthe says. She leans forward and stubs her cigarette out on his shirt, leaving a small circular burn hole in the fabric. “There you are. Run along, now.” 

Kyle the employee makes a high-pitched squeaking sound and runs away. Ianthe straightens up, nodding to Harrow. 

“See you around,” she says, and then walks off without a backwards glance. Harrow stands stock-still in the aisle, her brain working through what Ianthe had said. 

_Settle down. Happy ever after._

It’s horribly cliché. It’s disgustingly tacky. It’s what Harrow wants more than anything. 

Harrow grabs the cheapest bottle of wine from the rack and sets off towards the checkout counter. She’s got some people to talk to.

//

Palamedes opens the door almost as soon as Harrow knocks. He takes in her attire (grocery store sweats, oversized black sweater) and the expression on her face (somewhere between miserable and emotional trainwreck) in one brief second and then waves her inside, offering her the comfier of the two grey armchairs in the living room. 

Harrow sets the wine bottle on the coffee table, not knowing what else to do with it. “Palamedes. Hi. I brought you...wine.”

“Thank you,” he replies, settling into the less comfy armchair. “But I know that you aren’t here just to give me alcohol. We work at a bar.” He gives her a smile, but it’s not mocking; it’s just welcoming. Palamedes has always been a kindly source of comfort, and in this moment, Harrow intensely loves him for it. “What’s going on, Harrow?” 

“I,” Harrow begins, hoping that the rest of the sentence will come out on its own. It doesn’t. She closes her eyes for a moment, focuses on untwisting the familiar strands of panicked suppression that have so often kept her from sharing anything with anyone. “I don’t really know who else to talk to. It’s just - Gideon. I messed things up with her, and I don’t know where everything went wrong, and now she doesn’t even want to see me. And I don’t expect you to get it, because it wasn’t a serious - we didn’t tell anyone, but - I just don’t know what to do now.” 

“Harrow,” Palamedes says, his voice gentle. “Do you really think we don’t all know that you and Gideon are in love?” 

“We’re not - ” Harrow says, then falls silent. There’s something shifting in her mind, the last piece of the puzzle she’s so reluctantly been putting together over the last few weeks sliding into place. She thinks of Gideon smiling at her, leaning on the bar, asleep in the morning sun, and suddenly it all makes sense. 

There’s suddenly an irrational, unaccountable lump in her throat. 

“Hey,” Palamedes says, and then he’s reaching over to her. “It’s okay.” 

“I love her,” Harrow says wretchedly. “I actually love her.” 

“I know,” Palamedes says. He pulls her into a hug, and Harrow lets him. She’s tired of pulling away from what she wants, tired of hiding her own desire. “It’s okay. It’ll all work out.” 

Harrow sinks into his arms and hopes that he’s right. 

After a long moment, Palamedes lets go of her and gets up to make a pot of tea, and they sit in their respective chairs and drink from matching grey teacups that were undoubtedly purchased by Camilla. Harrow stares moodily into the steam curling from her cup, wondering where she’s supposed to go from here. 

“I don’t know what to do,” she says out loud. “I’ve never done this before. Relationships are not my forte, not that I was in a proper relationship with her anyway.” 

Palamedes stirs two sugar cubes into his tea. “You should talk to her.” 

The idea kicks Harrow’s heartbeat into a state of emergency. “No. That’s a terrible idea.” 

“I don’t think it is,” Palamedes says, adding a splash of milk to his tea and offering her the container. Harrow pulls her cup away instinctively. “Gideon likes you a lot, you know. It’s plain to see.” 

“It is?” Harrow asks, hating the hopeful note that creeps into her voice. 

“It is,” Palamedes confirms. “Besides, if you get together with her, then maybe Dulcinea will stop flirting with her and, well, consider dating me.” He blushes slightly, adjusting his glasses.

“Ulterior motives,” Harrow says, but she’s only being mildly serious. She knows that however much Palamedes likes Dulcinea, it takes a backseat to his wish to make things work out for her and Gideon. “I should have known.” 

Palamedes sets down his teacup and turns to face her, a smile curling at the edge of his mouth. “Talk to her, Harrow. You and her...well, I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but I think you could be something beautiful. For what it’s worth, you have my full support.” 

“Thanks,” Harrow mumbles, barely able to look him in the eye. 

“Now,” Palamedes continues, “have some more tea. And for god’s sake, put some sugar in. I’m getting heartburn just from watching you drink it black.” 

//

Harrow clocks in early the next day, working the first 10pm-6pm shift of the weekend. (The Locked Tomb is famously the only bar in Canaan to have morning service - or, as Camilla puts it, booze brunch.) She’s wiping down tables in the front when Gideon walks in - late as usual - and stops dead at the sight of her. 

“Nav,” Harrow manages to say. Her throat feels like it’s sealing itself shut. “Hi.” 

“Hey,” Gideon says. She doesn’t sound mad. She sounds cautious, and that’s even worse. Gideon’s been a lot of things around her - rude, annoying, loud, and distracting spring immediately to mind - but she’s never been cautious. To Harrow, the unfamiliar formality feels like a door being slammed in her face. 

Gideon grabs a cloth and starts cleaning the bartop. Harrow watches her for a moment, trying to find the words to bridge the gap between them. 

“I need to talk to you,” Harrow blurts out, instantly regretting the way that it came out like an order. She pauses for a moment, bites at the inside of her lip. “No. Can I - can we talk? After this?” 

“I thought you didn’t want anything to do with me,” Gideon says, and Harrow’s heart drops. “I mean, you pretty much made that clear the other night. I got the message that you want space, so I’ve been trying to give you that.” 

“That’s not what I…” Harrow stares at the ground, her next words coming out addressed to the floor. “I don't want that. And I’d really like to talk to you.” 

Gideon pauses for a moment, wrapping the cloth around her hand. “ _Really_ , really?” 

“Yes,” Harrow says. “We have things we need to discuss.” 

“Okay,” Gideon says. “After this shift?” 

Harrow nods. “We can do it after work.” 

A brief smile flashes across Gideon’s face. It’s not quite as bright as usual, but it’s enough; inwardly, Harrow almost collapses in relief at the sight of it. 

“I thought we were just going to talk,” Gideon says, “but hey, if you want to _do it…_ ” 

“Idiot,” Harrow says, but there’s nothing behind it. Instead of filling her with rage like they used to, Gideon’s terrible jokes just make her chest simmer warm with affection. She’s so far gone, so irredeemably past the point of return. “I’ll talk to you in a few hours.” 

//

“Where are we going?” Gideon asks, following Harrow up the staircase at the back of the bar. “Do you guys have a secret tower up here? Are we gonna have to rescue some Rapunzel-looking chick?” 

“Yes,” Harrow deadpans.

“Really?” 

“No, dumbass.” Harrow pushes open the door at the top of the stairs, stepping out onto the roof. “Here we are.” 

Gideon walks around the small space, taking in the tables and chairs, the abandoned bar cart, the view of Main Street spread out below them. “Wait a minute. I’ve been working here for _months_ now and nobody told me we had a rooftop area?” 

“There was a widespread agreement to withhold the information from you,” Harrow says dryly. “Stop pacing and sit down.” 

They sit in two chairs by the edge of the roof, facing out over the town. It’s the edge of evening, and the last light from the sunset sweeps across the horizon in broad strokes. 

“You wanted to talk, right?” Gideon says. She looks calm and collected, or as close as she’s ever been. Not expectant, not impatient, just waiting. 

Harrow takes a deep breath, and then another. As Gideon turns towards her, the light catching her perfectly, Harrow feels the knots in her chest untying themselves. For once in her life, she feels like she can speak freely. 

“My childhood was...difficult,” Harrow begins. “My parents never showed me affection in any recognizable form. I have never had a truly close friend. I barely had any friends at all until I went to college, and even then I didn’t engaged in any romantic relationships because I had no idea how to. Emotion has never come easily to me.” 

Gideon remains silent, and that’s how Harrow knows she’s listening.

“It’s just easier,” Harrow says. “Easier to pretend I don’t feel anything. Easier to avoid failure if I never even try in the first place. Detachment is the simplest way to circumvent pain.” She pauses. “That’s why I left the other night when you asked me to stay. I - I _felt_ too much, so I had to distance myself.” 

Gideon still isn’t saying anything. Harrow braves a glance over at her, a quick and fleeting movement out of the corner of her eye. Gideon is golden, almost glowing in the fading light, and the sight is enough to push Harrow through the rest of it. 

“I’m tired of distance,” Harrow says, and it feels so right, so _good_ , to finally admit that to herself. “I’m tired of pretending that I don’t want anything. I’m tired of pretending that I don’t want _you_. I can’t promise that I’ll be any good at any of this, but I want to try. If that’s what you want.” 

“You want me?” Gideon asks, and the awed disbelief in her voice makes Harrow’s chest ache. It feels like flowers growing outwards between her ribs, like blossoms blooming around every bone in her body. 

“Of course I do,” Harrow says. “ _Gideon_. I’ve always wanted you. It just took me a while to realize.” She inhales sharply, realizing the slip-up.

Gideon smiles at her now, crooked and beautiful and taking over her entire face. “You called me Gideon.” 

“Don’t get used to it,” Harrow says, feeling acutely embarrassed. Then, quieter: “Don’t you want me, too?” 

“Harrow,” Gideon says fondly. She reaches forward and places a hand at the side of Harrow’s face, and Harrow doesn’t flinch at the touch. “You are so oblivious, it’s insane. Of course I want you. I’ve always wanted you.” 

Harrow rolls her eyes but there’s not much bite to it, not when Gideon is looking at her like she’s every star in the night sky. She can feel her pulse fluttering like lightning beneath her skin. “Stop being ridiculous.” 

“I’m not,” Gideon says earnestly. “I’m serious. The first time I walked into the Locked Tomb - as soon as I saw you, my first thought was _holy shit. I’m totally going to fall in love with that girl.”_

Harrow’s heart skips and skips again, beating as erratically as a broken metronome. “It was?” 

“Okay, no,” Gideon admits. “My _first_ thought was _hey, why is this chick dressed like a high school Hot Topic employee?_ But right after that - yeah. It’s like I saw you and I just knew.” 

Harrow’s mouth curls into an uncontrollable smile, wide and unrestrained, so big it almost hurts. “You’re so dumb,” she says, not meaning a word of it. 

“And you love it,” Gideon replies. “One more question - ” 

“Anything,” Harrow says softly, and she means it with all that she is. Denying Gideon anything right now would be like denying herself oxygen. 

Gideon smiles even harder. “If I kiss you now, are you going to freak out?” 

“No,” Harrow says, and then before Gideon can say anything else, she leans in and presses her lips to Gideon’s. It’s a soft kiss, softer than any of the ones that came before, and it feels like the beginning of a poem. It feels like a promise. It feels like the climax of every love story Harrow’s ever sneered at, and she loves it more than life itself. 

When they eventually break apart, Gideon doesn’t let go; she scoops Harrow out of her chair and into her lap.“You know, I’ve always wanted a goth girlfriend.” 

“Girlfriend,” Harrow scoffs. “Who says I’m your girlfriend?” 

“Me,” Gideon says without hesitation. “I clearly wear the pants in this relationship.” 

Harrow rolls her eyes again, then presses another kiss to Gideon’s mouth. Gideon goes red, mumbling something that sounds like “Mmf” when Harrow pulls back. 

“Keep telling yourself that,” Harrow says, smirking. “Who knows, maybe one day it’ll even come true.” 

Gideon just laughs and pulls her closer. Harrow buries her face in Gideon’s neck and lets it happen.

//

“Do you think they’ve caught on yet?” Gideon asks her a week later. 

Harrow shrugs. “Who knows?” And then, reaching forward: “Pass the chips.” 

They’re in the kitchen at Gideon’s apartment, collecting snacks for the impromptu video game tournament that had sprung up as a result of Jeannemary and Isaac announcing that they could beat any comers at Mario Kart. The teenagers are now sitting in front of Gideon’s TV with Camilla, Corona, Palamedes, and Dulcinea, engaged in the third round of the tournament - and, if the screaming coming from the other room is anything to go by, quite possibly murdering each other. 

Gideon opens the chip bag and raises it over her head, laughing as Harrow tries fruitlessly to grab it from her. “Can’t quite reach, huh? Try standing up.” 

“I am standing up, asshole,” Harrow huffs. “You know that.” 

Gideon picks her up and sets her on the countertop, then hands her the bag of chips. “For you, my twilit princess.” She stands between Harrow’s legs, leaning against her, and pushes her mouth against Harrow’s collarbone in a sloppy kiss. “Don’t eat them all, though. Cam hasn’t even gotten the seven layer dip out yet.” 

“I do what I want,” Harrow says rebelliously, but she puts the bag down anyway.

“Oh?” Gideon asks, pulling back so that they’re face to face. She’s smiling, and Harrow can’t help smiling back. She’s never been this happy in her life; her face is starting to hurt from the constant smiles. “And what do you want?” 

Harrow raises her hands to cup Gideon’s face, then leans forward and kisses her quickly. “This.” 

There’s a gasp from the doorway, and Harrow and Gideon turn to see Camilla and Jeannemary staring at them. Jeannemary’s mouth is hanging wide open, but Camilla is faintly smirking. 

“I knew it,” Camilla says. “I _knew_ it.” 

Harrow grimaces. She’s never going to hear the end of this one. “Shut it, Hect.”

Jeannemary marches over and grabs Gideon’s sleeve, tugging on it impatiently. “Come with me,” she says, leading them all into the living room. Gideon settles onto the couch, moving over to make room for Harrow; Camilla returns to the beanbag chair by the TV, resting her head in Corona’s lap. Jeannemary sits down on the floor and punches Isaac in the shoulder. “Pay up, Isaac! I was right.” 

“You were?” Isaac asks, looking skeptical. “Are you sure?” 

“Of course I am,” Jeannemary says. “I’m always right.” 

Gideon raises her eyebrows at Harrow questioningly, and Harrow just shrugs. She has no idea what’s going on with this adolescent drama, and frankly she doesn’t really care. She’s more preoccupied with shifting around on the couch until she’s sitting between Gideon’s legs, leaning back against her chest. Gideon wraps her arms around Harrow’s waist, pressing a kiss to her shoulder, and Harrow 

“There!” Jeannemary says, pointing directly at Harrow. “See? They’re totally dating. Look at that.” 

Camilla lets out a snort of laughter as Isaac sighs morosely, pulling a twenty dollar bill out of his pocket and flinging it at Jeannemary. “Fine, you were right.” 

“I know,” Jeannemary says proudly. 

Harrow frowns. “Wait, were you _betting_ on whether we were dating or not?” 

“Uh, yeah,” Isaac says, like this should be totally obvious. “Gideon’s the one who told us to, remember? At your birthday party? She was all like, ‘hey, if your friends are obviously into each other, bet on when they'll get together.’” 

Gideon laughs, and Harrow feels it against her back. “He’s right, you know. I did say that.” 

“What a shining example you set for the children,” Camilla says wryly. 

Corona laughs too, running one hand through Camilla’s hair. “I think it was a great idea, Jeannemary. You should’ve bet more money.” 

“You could make it double or nothing,” Palamedes suggests from his chair by the window. “Winner of the next Mario Kart round takes all.” 

As Jeannemary and Isaac start arguing over the new offer, Gideon slouches forward and rests her chin on Harrow’s shoulder. “What do you think?” she says teasingly. “Wanna bet on how long we last?” 

Harrow snorts. “ _No_.” 

“But if you were to bet, hypothetically…” Gideon reaches for her hand, lacing their fingers together. “How long would you say? A week? A mont? Sixty-nine days?” 

“As long as you want me,” Harrow mutters, feeling her face burning. She’s slowly getting used to this whole affection thing; there’s still a learning curve, but it’s worth it to see the look on Gideon’s face. “That’s how long.” 

“As long as I want you, huh,” Gideon says, and Harrow can hear the smile in her voice without even looking. “Looks like you’re stuck with me for eternity, then.” 

Harrow rests her head against Gideon’s shoulder and looks around the room, a slow burn of warmth spreading through her chest. She’s got friends, and she’s got Gideon, and for the first time in a long time, her emotions don’t feel like a trap waiting to spring closed on her. 

For the first time in a long time, she’s happy. 

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. jesus christ i’m never trying to write smut again. 2. to anyone who understood the joke behind ianthe's choice in french fry brands, i love u 
> 
> come find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/thymewars)


End file.
